Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

[Allegro]

^ Thank You, Alice. I love the street music, and, well, I love both videos, of course!

I had to find out more about the pianist and conductor, and I’m very glad I did. Many RI readers know how international many practicing musicians are in classical, jazz and pop worlds, and those performers blend those musics whenever they may.

Still, many people will over time realize and enjoy the influences music performed in concert halls or streets have during those few moments shared together in musical pleasures, and changes created in listeners may be subtle sometimes, but remain in memories,
especially in kitchens .

~ A.

_________________

WIKI introduction | Omar Khairat (born November 11, 1948) (Arabic: عمر خيرت) is a composer, pianist, founder and conductor of “Omar Khairat’s Group”.

Career

He joined the Cairo Conservatoire in 1959, studied piano with Italian Maestro Vincenzo Carro and followed correspondence courses in music theory and composition with the Trinity College in England. Omar Khairat shaped his musical identity as a professional independent composer achieving new musical visions characterized with deepness and richness. His debut performing in film music was The Night of Arresting Fatma in 1983. According to music experts and critics, Omar Khairat’s music bridges contemporary Arab music and Western music reflecting genuine maturity.

Khairat understands Arab emotions and music which helps him to attract a large audience from the whole Arab region. He regularly performed at the Cairo Opera House and all the Egyptian and Arab ceremonies during the last fifteen years.

_________________

Nader Abbassi, conductor (Swiss / Egyptian)

In his conducting career Nader Abbassi benefits from his exceptionally wide professional experience as a singer, bassoonist and composer.

In July 2011 Nader Abbassi was appointed Artistic and Musical Director of KATARA Culture Foundation, Doha - Qatar.

From 2009 to 2011 he was the first Musical Director & Principal Conductor for the newly formed “Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra” (QPO), which consists of one hundred and one professional musicians from around the world.

He will continue his regular collaboration with the QPO in the future.

Since 2002 he holds the position of Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Cairo Opera Orchestra.

The same year Nader Abbassi made his acclaimed debut in the mega production of “Aida” at the pyramids in Giza.

The Cairo Opera Orchestra under his baton was invited to various festivals, opera productions and concerts as (Thessaloniki, Greece, Mexico, Germany, Beijing, China, Oman).

Nader Abbassi is also the artistic director of the “Orchestre pour la Paix” in Paris.

This orchestra, founded by the Argentinian pianist Miguel Estrella, unites young professional musicians from all over the world for the promotion of a peaceful dialogue between different cultures and religions.

Nader is a permanent member of the Jury of the “International Stenhammar Singing Competition” at Norköping, hosted by the King of Sweden.

In 2006 Nader Abbassi conducted Menotti’s forgotten opera “Maria Golovine” in the presence of the composer at the Marseille Opera House.

Since then he is regularly invited to conduct concerts and operas, including “Hamlet”, “Un Ballo in Maschera”, “La Belle Helene”, “Aida” and “Carmen” (2012).

Nader Abbassi conducted various international orchestras, such as Sinfonieorchester Basel, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Philharmonisches Orchester Heidelberg, Orchester des Richard Strauss Konservatoriums München (Germany), Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille, Orchestre National Pays de la Loire, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Switzerland), Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, Chaliapin and Nuriev Festival with the Bashkir Opera Orchestra (Russia), Orquesta Sinfonica de Guanajuato (Mexico), Norköpping Philharmonic Orchestra (Sweden), Euro Orchestra da camera di Bari (Italy), Lisbon Philharmonic Orchestra (Portugal).

He gave his US debut conducting the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra in spring 2008 and returned in 2010.

Nader Abbassi was awarded the Citation of Excellence and Outstanding Music Award in 1980 and 1982 (USA).

He won several 1st prizes from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture for bassoon and composition in 1986, 1995 and 1996.

Winner of the Mozart Chamber Music Competition in Geneva, 1992.

Among others, the Geneva Ballet Company, Geneva Chamber Orchestra, Swiss Romande Orchestra, Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra and the Swiss Clarinet Players commissioned him new compositions.

His future projects include: Concerts in Korea, Mexico, Sweden, France. “Aida” at Glimmerglass Festival USA , “Dialogues des Carmelites” at Opera de Bordeaux, “Carmen” at Opera de Marseille.

This is neither here nor there, but I was just remembering how, even in the darkest days of Morsi's rule, there were always many points of light. One of them was the "sit-in" that was organized by Egyptian musicians and dancers and actors and other artists, to protest the Brotherhood's appointment of a Culture Minister whose mission was to ban and stifle cultural expression in Egypt. In response, they camped out in front of the Ministry of Culture for more than a month, until Morsi was removed. During that month, they organized free performances in the street (musical, dance, drama, etc.) for the public every day and late into the night. Here's one of them:



And a few weeks ago, we attended a performance (less formal and more crowded) of Omar Khairat, the composer/pianist who is featured in the video below. Our guest, who was Swiss, was blown away. He said, "I wish people back home could see this side of Egypt." So do I.

[stefano]

Hi Alice,

Thanks again for the effort you put into posting here. Sorry I'm slow in responding - I stayed away from the computer last week, and your long and detailed post rattled my convictions a bit. More than a bit - it made me reconsider what I thought had happened at Rabaa Al-Adawiya and, since that's probably the most significant event since the coup, what I thought of the new government more broadly. It's gone deeper than that, though, and I feel on much less solid ground when I evaluate what I know about everything, and have been thinking with more precision about why I think I know what I think I know, ha. A good thing, of course, to have to consider the origins of one's convictions, but unsettling. I clearly made a mistake not checking in to RI for some months and so missing your contributions here. I'll try to address some of the points you've raised but would of course be delighted to continue the conversation.

Your framing of the issue above, which I found very telling, is a good example of how your point of view has been shaped (almost certainly without your being aware of it) by the barrier I referred to earlier. The barrier seems to operate like a meat grinder -- you put in one big chunk of beef (Egypt) and what comes out the other side is a bunch of separate strings: "personal threats", Coptic interests, women's interests, etc.

Yes... I do try not to be reductive, especially as Bernard Lewis's kind of frankly racist pseudo-analysis angers me immensely, aiming as it does more to justify an existing imperial project than to help anyone understand anything. We all have to use categories in political analysis, though, don't we? Classes based on wealth, age, race, religion and ideological inclination and which favour their own interests. The world's too complex to understand otherwise. It's tricky (but important!) to know where useful categorisation ends and depersonalising reductiveness begins, and anyone thinking about this kind of thing risks erring on the side of simplification. But I do think women's rights issues tend to matter more to women than to men.

Given how close we came to losing our country to the same fate as too many of our neighbors, it's ok for us to celebrate the unity and strength and courage of our people, who allowed us to thwart the best-laid plans of truly vicious enemies. ... And we couldn't have done it without our army, and without its brave and capable leader, who's earned our trust and respect. That you view our celebration as a "personality cult" suggests that you just don't get it, and perhaps can't.

Well that's part of it, maybe I can't get it. I have a sort of reflexive mistrust of power, and military power in particular. I grew up in a country (South Africa in the 1980s) where nationalism and national symbols were used, together with a narrative about a terrorist enemy organisation, to keep people in line, and any kind of flag-waving pomp sets my teeth on edge. Living in Ben Ali's Tunisia only reinforced my reaction to little flags and pictures of the boss everywhere. And even if I was wrong about Rabaa there are elements of Sisi's career that still make me dubious - he rose through the ranks of the army in Mubarak's time, with all the skill at networking with corrupt NDP elements that that implies, received training in the US, and was put forward by the army to become Moursi's defence minister when Tantawi and Enan were retired.

I don't know what you mean by the "'principles of Islamic sharia' gag in the constitution".

My understanding had been that the Salafists negotiated for the inclusion of that clause, because I found it hard to believe that the other participants would have left it in. The word 'sharia' especially, since it was so ubiquitous in those Moursi posters with his face under the slogan 'yes to sharia'.

The legitimate borders between Egypt and Gaza are open, but the tunnels were being used to smuggle weapons, other contraband and terrorists and posed a severe danger to Egyptian citizens and military alike.

OK, thanks.

Maybe you're thinking about the workers in the Iron and Steel Works, who went on strike and staged a sit-in to protest not receiving their shares of profits that happened to be non-existent, since the factory had indeed been badly mismanaged.

Them, as well as three strikes in August, at Suez Steel, Scimitar Petroleum and Misr Textile.

According to Fatma Ramadan of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU), “these latest crackdowns are part of the security forces’ ongoing policy against industrial actions.” She explains that since the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak, the security apparatuses are “repeatedly attempting to criminalize workers’ strikes and protests and to portray striking workers as trouble-makers, counter-revolutionaries, hired-hands and provocateurs seeking to harm the economy.”

In relation to the current period following the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in July, Ramadan adds, “The police are utilizing these exceptional laws as a pretext to crackdown on striking workers. Under these exceptional circumstances and this atmosphere of fear, striking workers are being labeled as terrorists or agents of the Muslim Brotherhood, along with other baseless accusations.”

Amr Youssef, a union organizer at the Suez Steel Company whom police arrested as he attempted to enter the factory gates on August 12, recounts that 14 workers have been threatened by both their employer and the security forces. "They’ve threatened to sack us from our jobs, while also claiming that we are Muslim Brotherhood supporters," he explains.

The army owns the factories and a military-backed government deploys security services to intimidate workers. There's at least the potential for the crony capitalism of the NDP days to make a comeback.

I've heard and seen the reports of independent human rights workers who participated with police in planning the camps' dispersal, to ensure that no international or domestic laws were violated by police. None of the Islamists' kids were beaten to death as you put it; where do you get your information?

From sources I hadn't, until now, had any reason to doubt: mostly Ahram and Reuters, and, more lately, Mada Masr. I'll keep closer track of this thread from now on, but can you point me to any other good sources? Even if they're in Arabic, I'll struggle through it if that's the only place to get good news. The stuff you posted above about the Halayeb Triangle and the Sinai I had no idea about - who reports news like that?

I seldom read mainstream Western analysis on Egypt for the reasons you mention at the start of your post - I tend to just watch the news closely and draw my own conclusions. The Western analysts I tend to pay attention to are academics, mostly the people that the LSE invites to its talks. Some analysts in Egypt came to the same conclusions as I did, though, like the people at Mada Masr and Issandr El-Amrani (although what you've said about April 6 is making me think twice about Mada Masr).

The four-fingered sign is a symbol of support for the extreme violence and murders and destruction of private and public property that those who raise it have been perpetrating. It's the symbol of a fascist, supremacist cult predicated on the principle that members are required to commit any crime, no matter how horrible, against those who will not submit to their rule. It is the symbol of hate against members of other religions, raised as they deface and desecrate its houses of worship and attack innocent people, even children. Its meaning is identical to that of the Nazi salute. Germany and other countries ban the Nazi salute, maybe you can direct your outrage at them, and leave us to bury our dead and try to rebuild what these monsters are so gleefully destroying, even as we speak (yet another bomb was exploded at Military Intelligence headquarters in the Delta yesterday, and two other bombs were found and defused -- one on a public bus, and another in the playground of a school). Maybe you'd feel differently if you could read the joy and triumph with which every killing or maiming of Egyptians is greeted, by those who proudly raise the salute and use it as their profile picture in social media. Maybe not.

Here I still disagree with you. As disastrous as the MB's year was, you can't compare it to World War II. Nor do I think most people who use the sign do so in celebration of terrorism - for the Islamists of my distant acquaintance it's a sign in protest against the killing of 2,500 unarmed martyrs at Rabaa (in the Islamists' narrative) and the removal of an elected and thus legitimate (again, in the Islamists' telling) president. These are people who write off terrorism as the actions of a few extremists that should be considered a reaction to the coup, when they mention it at all.

Thanks again so much for your contributions and for the massive difference you make to how I understand Egypt.

[JackRiddler]

Living in Ben Ali's Tunisia only reinforced my reaction to little flags and pictures of the boss everywhere.

Wow, now that's a story for you to tell here.

Thanks again so much for your contributions and for the massive difference you make to how I understand Egypt.

I think so too.

[stefano]

Living in Ben Ali's Tunisia only reinforced my reaction to little flags and pictures of the boss everywhere.

Wow, now that's a story for you to tell here.

Well that visual propaganda was the first thing that creeped me out about the place. Or rather about the way it was run. I came in to Tunis by ferry, so one of the first things I saw coming out of the harbour precinct was a massive, probably 10m-tall portrait of Ben Ali that used to be up on the Kasbah of La Goulette. (That portrait btw inspired a brilliant bit of guerilla political comment - check the video here.)



Those portraits (or one of two others - Ben Ali in full formal dress next to the national flag or wearing a very spivvy white suit and mauve tie) were everywhere, inside every place of business, even tiny little barbershops and kiosks selling smokes. My local bar had a badly photoshopped pic of Ben Ali helping the captain of Esperance de Tunis lift a trophy up on the wall. The main street in every town was either Avenue Bourguiba (I think those are still called that, the one in Tunis is, at any rate), or else Avenue 7 Novembre, the date of Ben Ali's palace coup against Bourguiba. And I'd never seen so many cops, with the ones in front of sensitive sites (including a radio station down the road from where I worked) carrying automatic rifles.

It took a little longer to see more of the effects of how the place was run, and to build up the kind of friendship with my Tunisian colleagues that let them talk politics to me. To hear stories of how a good mate's brother-in-law was run over by a drunk, drugged friend of the Trabelsis who got off scot-free, and how an ageing policeman who insisted on making a case against some connected felon lost his pension. To hear how a container of Imed Trabelsi's was found full of hash and nothing came of it, in a country where any common person caught with a stick of hash would get five years in jail. I found out that every company had a stool pigeon reporting to the interior ministry - we suspected one of the couriers, a little dude with a cop moustache, but maybe he was too obvious. If you were having a conversation about current affairs in a cafe, even an innocuous one, you stopped talking when the waiter came close and only started again once he was out of earshot. All opposition newspapers were banned except one, Mawkif, and that one was used as a sort of trap since anyone who bought it would have a file opened at the interior ministry. The Jeune Afrique was on the shelves four days late (it's a weekly) because someone at customs had to read the entire issue to check for critical references to government; if there were any the magazine wasn't distributed at all. YouTube was blocked. If you weren't a member of the RCD then any administrative procedure would take ages and the government just made things difficult for you. Twice, when I took a bus out to small towns at the weekend, I came back to my hotel room to find that my bag had been opened, and in such a way that I couldn't fail to notice. Ahead of 7 November, people at our office were a bit slow to put up the obligatory flags and bunting, and the MD got a call from a veterans' association across the street asking pointedly if the company didn't support the government.

These are just the things I experienced first- or second-hand, quite apart from the darker stuff that was going on at the time - the tortures in the cells under the interior ministry and the long stretches in solitary confinement for Islamists.

The societal effects of all this bullshit took even longer to really get a handle on, and are harder to put in words. It translated into a sort of resignation and ennui, with almost no one putting effort into doing anything interesting or creative or entrepreneurial. Anyone with savings tried to open a salon de the, bland coffee shops which were universally characterless, and then people would just sit there and watch generic Lebanese pop videos. Football was ridiculously tribal, and television was really bad, especially the frankly stupid Ramadan sitcoms. Of course TV and sports are used for societal control in most countries, but I only really became aware of it in Tunis because it was more obvious there, and it's really since then that I've been anti-TV. There was a group of moviemakers and playwrights that tried to do some interesting stuff but anything really edgy was out of the question. (Darkly funny: there was a de facto ban on any character in a TV show or play being a hairdresser, because Leila Trabelsi had been a hairdresser before she seduced Ben Ali away from his first wife.) It resulted in this watchful, careful, conformist society that was the opposite of what I think is closer to Tunisia's national character - a very Arab and Mediterranean extroverted congeniality that was only visible when people felt they were among friends.

Yeah, so, police states suck and I'd hate for Egypt to go back to that.

[beeline]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/01/14/uk-egypt-gaza-exclusive-idUKBREA0D09Q20140114

Exclusive - With Muslim Brotherhood crushed, Egypt sets sights on Hamas

By Yasmine Saleh

CAIRO Tue Jan 14, 2014 6:45am GMT


(Reuters) - After crushing the Muslim Brotherhood at home, Egypt's military rulers plan to undermine the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs the neighbouring Gaza Strip, senior Egyptian security officials told Reuters.

The aim, which the officials say could take years to pull off, includes working with Hamas's political rivals Fatah and supporting popular anti-Hamas activities in Gaza, four security and diplomatic officials said.

Since it seized power in Egypt last summer, Egypt's military has squeezed Gaza's economy by destroying most of the 1,200 tunnels used to smuggle food, cars and weapons to the coastal enclave, which is under an Israeli blockade.

Now Cairo is becoming even more ambitious in its drive to eradicate what it says are militant organisations that threaten its national security.

Intelligence operatives, with help from Hamas's political rivals and activists, plan to undermine the credibility of Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief civil war against the Fatah movement led by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

According to the Egyptian officials, Hamas will face growing resistance by activists who will launch protests similar to those in Egypt that have led to the downfall of two presidents since the Arab Spring in 2011. Cairo plans to support such protests in an effort to cripple Hamas.

"Gaza is next," said one senior security official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "We cannot get liberated from the terrorism of the Brotherhood in Egypt without ending it in Gaza, which lies on our borders."

Asked why Egyptian intelligence is not going after Hamas now, another senior security official said: "Their day will come."

Egypt accuses Hamas of backing al Qaeda-linked militant groups which have stepped up attacks against security forces in Egypt's Sinai peninsula over the past few months. The attacks have spread to Cairo and other cities.

Both the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas deny accusations of terrorism, and the Brotherhood says it is committed to peaceful activism. The group was ousted from power in Egypt after the military threw its weight behind street protests last summer.

Freely-elected president Mohamed Mursi is now on trial on charges of inciting the murder of protesters during his presidency. Egypt's military-backed government has cracked down hard on the Brotherhood, arresting almost its entire leadership and thousands of its backers as well as formally declaring it a terrorist organisation.

But the situation is very different in Gaza, where Hamas, an offshoot of the Brotherhood, is heavily armed, has years of experience fighting Israel, and moves swiftly to squash dissent.

A Hamas official said the comments made to Reuters by Egyptian officials showed Cairo was inciting violence and trying to provoke chaos.

"We reaffirm that Hamas did not and never would intervene in the internal Egyptian affairs," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. "No one should ever dream to weaken Hamas."

"A LOT OF ANGER"

So far, contacts between Egypt and Fatah have been limited to discussing ways to help Fatah undermine Hamas, said the officials. They declined to name Palestinians involved in those discussions or give details of how many meetings have been held.

Hamas keeps Fatah party officials under very close watch in Gaza. A senior Fatah official in the occupied West Bank, where the party is far more powerful, denied any plot to oust Hamas.

"There is a lot of anger in Gaza. People are suffering, but protest is not easy. We cannot hope that Hamas will vanish tomorrow," he said.

Hamas has an estimated 20,000 fighters, with another 20,000 in its police and security forces. Despite growing economic hardship in Gaza, the group can still draw on significant support from among the territory's 1.8 million people.

But Egyptian officials hope to exploit tensions with rival militant groups, even if there are no signs of major splits yet.

"We know that Hamas is powerful and armed but we also know that there are other armed groups in Gaza that are not on good terms with Hamas and they could be used to face Hamas," another Egyptian security source said.

"All people want is to eat, drink and have a decent living, and if a government, armed or not, fails to provide that, then the people will rise against it in the end," the source said.

"THE FIRST SPARK"

In early January, Cairo publicly hosted the first conference of a new anti-Hamas youth group called Tamarud, or rebel, the same name used by the Egyptian youth movement that led last year's protests against Mursi.

Members of the Palestinian Tamarud stood with the Palestinian flag wrapped around their necks to highlight what they called Hamas's crimes against activists in Gaza.

The event was attended by representatives from Egyptian liberal parties and Fatah.

"We support the movement and any peaceful movement against the cruelty of the Islamist group that is part of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organisation," said Ayman al-Raqb, a Fatah official in Cairo in his speech at the conference.

The activists showed video clips of masked gunmen chasing and dragging away protesters, and posted banners showing activists who they said had been tortured by Hamas for their opposition.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights last year accused Hamas of orchestrating a fierce crackdown against activists suspected of trying to organise a Tamarud-like protest in November. It said some of those detained were tortured and the mooted rally never materialised.

Hamas has accused Tamarud members of being Israeli agents, but has denied allegations of torture.

Activists in Cairo have called for protests in Gaza on March 21.

Egyptian officials hope that future Hamas crackdowns may turn the tide against the movement's leadership.

"Surely, the world will not stand still and allow Hamas to kill Palestinians. Someone will interfere," said the Egyptian security official. "But so far we are only working on firing the first spark."

But officials also concede that the plan is likely to take years.

"The aid Egypt will mainly provide to the anti-Hamas groups will be logistical not financial. Tamaruds don't cost much," one Egyptian security official said.

TUNNELS

The plan to undermine Hamas reflects renewed confidence among Egypt's security forces after being sidelined following the fall of long-time president Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Senior security officials are now determined to eliminate their Islamist foes for good - inside and outside Egypt.

They were angry when Mursi became the first Egyptian president to meet Hamas leaders in the presidential palace. Mursi also sent his prime minister to Gaza on the second day of an Israeli offensive on the enclave in November 2012.

Many Egyptians believe the Brotherhood intended to give part of the Sinai to Hamas. The Brotherhood has consistently denied the allegation.

Mursi's administration did acknowledge the problem posed by the tunnels under the border between Egypt and Gaza. His national security adviser last year said the government was flooding a number of tunnels he described as illegal.

But the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza was kept open for much of Mursi's rule, allowing vital food and goods to flow into Gaza.

After Mursi's overthrow, the army took over command of the Sinai and started destroying hundreds of tunnels. No Hamas official has been allowed to travel into Egypt since then.

Last month, Egypt's public prosecutor accused Hamas of conspiring with Mursi and Iran to stage terrorist attacks in Egypt.

"We know Hamas is the Brotherhood and the Brotherhood (members) are terrorists and no country could develop with terrorists in or around it," the security official said.

Gaza prime minister and Hamas deputy leader Ismail Haniyeh has said repeatedly since July that his group is focused exclusively on confronting arch-foe Israel and has no armed presence in Egypt.

"We do not intervene in Egyptian internal affairs," he told supporters last month. "Egypt cannot do without us and we cannot do without Egypt. This historical, geographic and security link can never be severed."

However, an Egyptian security official, who declined to be named, dismissed his words. "They (Hamas leaders) can say what they want on their role in Sinai. We don't base our judgment on them, but on intelligence and information."

[American Dream]

Cross-posting from the "Egypt - Return of the deep state" thread:

This is well worth the half hour it takes to listen:

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/16 ... sam-el-ham

Egypt's Terrible Three: Interview with Hossam El-Hamalawy

Jan 16 2014
by Malihe Razazan


Revolutionary Front protest in Talaat Harb Square on 19 November
2013 to commemorate the Mohammed Mahmoud clashes two years prior.

Nearly three years after the fall of Mubarak, with the deep state and the military openly back in control, Egypt seems to have come full circle. How did that happen and what is the situation on the ground really like, with Egyptians going to the polls yet again to vote on a new constitution? Vomena's Khalil Bendib speaks with Egyptian activist, blogger, and journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy.

[vanlose kid]

The Square: an Egyptian Oscar nominee that won't be shown in Egypt
Director Jehane Noujaim discusses her documentary on Tahrir Square and three years of revolutionary political upheaval

Patrick Kingsley
theguardian.com, Monday 20 January 2014 18.00 GMT

The Square is the first Egyptian film to earn an Oscar nomination – but it cannot officially be shown in Egypt itself. That is down to its provocative subject matter: the documentary charts the course of Egypt's political upheaval since 2011, through the eyes of a handful of Tahrir Square protesters. Here, the film's director, Jehane Noujaim, explains how she made it, and defends her protagonists against accusations of idealism.

Patrick Kingsley: The film focuses on half a dozen protesters who you follow over a three-year period, beginning right at the start of the 2011 uprising. Why did you decide to focus on these people in particular, and how did you find them so early in the revolution?

Jehane Noujaim: I look for characters that I fall in love with, that will take me places that I have never been, that challenge my thinking, and that I want to be led through the journey with. If I connect to them on a personal and human level, I know that an audience will connect to them and the film will reach the hearts and minds of people in Egypt and outside of Egypt. We were very lucky to have met the leads of the film early on in the revolution – all of them in the 18 days before [President Hosni] Mubarak stepped down.

There are three main characters in the film – Ahmed, Magdy [a member of Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood] and Khalid. Ahmed, the lead character, is for me representative of so much of the youth that came down to the square – he grew up in Shobra, a very low-income area of Cairo, his mother is illiterate, and sold vegetables to make a living, his father died when he was a young boy. Yet it was important to Ahmed's mother to put him through schooling and he attended high school and two years of journalism school, but found no employment opportunity and supported himself by taking every odd job imaginable.

He went down to the square frustrated by the lack of opportunity in the country, disgusted by the corruption and demanding a different future, and a life of freedoms and dignity. I met him because a friend of mine was making a television piece on him, I became friends with him, and was completely drawn to his charisma, his street smarts, his wisdom about the "arab street" and his deep optimism about the future – which he still has, despite the difficulties that he has been through.

Magdy, I met because he was sleeping in the tent next door to ours – he always seemed to be on watch, and later told me that his job was to be on the look out for thugs, or people that were trying to come in to disrupt the protest. I got to know him because he would go up to Pierre Sioufi's flat and be involved in long, fascinating conversations with people who had very different religious and political views than he – yet he welcomed the debate with secular friends and was very open to teaching and learning from people coming from very different perspectives.

Khalid I met in the square through Aida El Kashef, an old friend of his and his wife, Cressida. I began speaking with Cressida in the square and asking her questions about how she felt about what was happening around us, and she quickly introduced me to her husband. Khalid was incredibly articulate about what was happening many times when frankly, I was trying hard to understand what was happening. He has a deep love for his country and the fate of its people, comes from three generations of political activism, and would spend hours in the square speaking and debating with people about the future of the country.

Rami Essam I believe I also met through Aida, and he was quite a prominent figure early on, turning the chants of the revolution into songs of the revolution. Aida, I had met while making a previous film (Shayfeen.com) which came out in 2007 and which followed the creation and the work of the activist group shayfeen.com.

Ragia, finally, although she gets a lot less screen time than she and her work deserves, is someone I have known since childhood. However, because most of her work occurred in prisons and courthouses outside of the square, she has not been as much of a focus in this film, which centered on the square and the relationship of the characters to the square.

PK: Which character changed the most over the course of the filming?

JN: I would say that all of them changed but perhaps Ahmed and Magdy changed the most. One sees Ahmed literally grow older physically in the film and go from being a kid in the street to having a political education. Magdy changes as well, as his relationship to the Brotherhood changes over the course of the three years.

PK: Several times in the film, the camera operators appear to be in severe danger – either from arrest or gunfire. What was the most challenging moment you personally faced during filming?

JN: This film was born from the square, so each person on the film crew came from the square and were protesters first. Each person on the crew was shot at, tear gassed, injured or arrested. Most have had their cameras confiscated, or smashed and footage stolen. I personally found the most challenging moment to be during Mohammed Mahmoud [the violent second wave of protests in November 2011]. I had been trying to film the ceasefire – it was a beautiful moment when the Sheikhs of Al Azhar were praying, the sun was setting and there seemed to be peace between the protestors and the army and police after three days of violence.

When the ceasefire was broken and tear gas began to fly – the people who were trying to keep the peace continued to pray, trying with all their might to keep the peace and calm. It was a beautiful scene that we filmed. Magdy (who I was with) and I ran towards the army side rather than the protester side. Finding ourselves surrounded by army, Magdy and I began a 10-minute interview with a teargas-mask-wearing army public affairs officer (who kindly directed me and Magdy as to how to leave the area) – I was then stopped by another, ski-mask wearing army general, who confiscated my film and equipment and delivered me to police officers who drove us around in a truck for a number of hours before I was found by Ragia Omran, the human-rights lawyer in the film. With her expert legal aid and the help of her lawyers, I was released along with the 300 others who had been rounded up. I still do find that the most challenging moment in that entire experience was the moment that the footage of that magical scenes of peacemaking was confiscated, never to be seen again.

PK: One analyst has criticised the non-Islamist activists in the film, and their colleagues, for only thinking about the revolution in the context of protests in and around the eponymous square – rather than engaging with the wider political process. What did you make of this criticism?

JN: The analyst should probably talk with the characters and ask them why they focused on the square as a tool for changing their country and why they felt that it was the best use of their time and efforts. The film is called The Square, and it focuses on the experiences of three characters from diverse backgrounds and their relationship with this particular piece of land, Tahrir Square, over the course of nearly three years. We felt this was an interesting subject, given that there are public squares that are being occupied in Kiev, Istanbul, Athens, Rio and the United States. We chose to follow people that were heavily invested in that square as a tool for change.

There were other people that were heavily involved in the political process, in the government, in the judiciary, in the elections, in the voting process, in the parliament – and those are interesting films to be made as well. The Egyptian revolution will be debated, analysed and written about for years to come and the experiences of all levels of the political process are being debated. There are important films to be made about the political process and we hope to see them soon – maybe this analyst would like to make one himself!

In the mentioned article, there also seems to be an illiteracy to the reading of the film – thinking that this film and its characters should be a representation of everything that happened in the revolution in the last three years. We took a deep personal look at what it meant to be Khalid, Ahmed and Magdy in the square, we were fascinated by their use of a piece of land as a political tool and their experience being inside of it, and that is the story we chose to tell.

PK: Hassan is shot during the army rule that followed Mubarak's resignation, and is filmed fiercely criticising military leaders. But 18 months later he welcomes the army's re-involvement in political life as they help overthrow Mohamed Morsi. What made him and others take this u-turn on the military?

JN: Ahmed Hassan never welcomed the army's re-involvement in political life. He says in the film "the army is coming down, lets not fool ourselves", but he is not welcoming their involvement in political life or the government. When Morsi is overthrown, Ahmed Hassan is happy because he saw Morsi as using the tools of democracy to try to create another dictatorship – and not being accountable to all people but only answering to the needs of the Brotherhood. However, this did not mean that he welcomed the army re-involvement. He says clearly to Magdy on the phone: "I want to come stand with you because this revolution was for a principal, not for blood, and what I have been worried about is going to start happening, that we are going to start killing one another."

Ahmed was very disturbed by the police and army's actions and clearly states it when he says: "The leaders are on top, and is always the people on the bottom that are dying and suffering – it doesn't matter who they are, christian, salafi, brotherhood, revolutionary, we are all Egyptian." His message is that we are all Egyptian and all of our rights should be protected.

PK: "The revolution is coming despite anyone," says Hassan, after protesters successively force Mubarak, the army and Morsi from power. As the new government takes an authoritarian turn, and with many Egyptians appearing to tire of constant political instability, do you think he's right?

JN: There is no denying that this a dark moment in Egypt, but as Ahmed Hassan has said, "the revolution is a voice", it has entered into every Egyptian home and there has been a shift of consciousness in the country in people's ability to effect change. The political timeline may not bear the results that many had hoped for Egypt – however, the passion and dedication of the many like Ahmed who were willing to sacrifice their life for the future of their country will never be destroyed and they will continue to fight for that change until it comes.

Documenting this movement and witnessing the incredible relentlessness of people like Ahmed has only reaffirmed our belief in Margaret Mead's words: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

PK: The characters come from a range of backgrounds – and sometimes opposing ideologies – and yet they become friends as the film goes on. Was their bonding a process that was already in motion or did the making of the film help bring them together?

JN: As Ahmed says, "We meet each other in the square". The entire nation met in Tahrir, it was a melting pot of Egypt. It was also a place where people of very different backgrounds died next to each other, were injured next to each other and formed a bond with each other. We choose characters that we felt represented a diverse background and were people that we wanted to share with the world. What made them the main characters in the film was their actions and continual return to Tahrir Square as a political statement and as a symbol of their ongoing battle and refusal to give up in the struggle for the future of the nation.

What bonds Magdy, Ahmed, and Khalid is that they are all principled people, unwilling to compromise on the dream of a future of Egypt which recognises and protects the rights and freedoms of every Egyptian.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/ja ... ee-noujaim

*

[beeline]

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-egypt-al-jazeera-trial-20140129,0,4430089.story#axzz2rpDksZMr

Egypt orders 20 Al Jazeera journalists to stand trial


By Laura King

January 29, 2014, 12:50 p.m.

CAIRO – In what appears to be an escalating effort to curtail press freedoms in Egypt, prosecutors have referred 20 journalists working for the news channel Al Jazeera, four of them foreigners, to trial on charges of aiding or joining a terrorist group.

The charges, made public Wednesday, seemingly criminalize routine journalistic activities such as interviewing supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi and his Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has been designated by the military-backed government as a terrorist organization.

The case marks the first time that journalists have been referred to trial under Egypt’s interim administration on charges related to terrorism. The list of defendants and the full charges against them were not released, but the accused include three journalists with Al Jazeera's English-language broadcast who have been detained since Dec. 29.

They are Peter Greste, an Australian; Mohamed Fahmy, an Egyptian with Canadian citizenship who has been serving as the channel’s Cairo bureau chief; and Baher Mohamed, a producer. Al Jazeera has demanded their release.

The prosecutors' statement accuses the journalists, including a Dutch citizen and two Britons, of making false statements that benefited a terrorist group.

No trial date has been set. The charges could carry a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

The statement said eight of the 20 were already in custody. It was unclear whether any of the others were in the country. Authorities have said the three employees of the English-language broadcast were working without proper credentials.

The arrests have drawn sharp criticism from human rights groups and press freedom organizations.

The prosecutors' statement accuses the journalists of manipulating images to give the impression of a civil war in Egypt. The country has been beset by large-scale unrest since the army’s ousting of Morsi in July, following a massive uprising against his rule.

Clashes between security forces and opponents of the government killed more than 60 people Saturday, the third anniversary of the beginning of the uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Morsi, together with most leaders of the Brotherhood, is in jail and facing an array of charges. Thousands of supporters of the movement have been imprisoned, and hundreds were killed in August when police and soldiers violently broke up sit-in protests in Cairo and elsewhere.

Al Jazeera’s Egyptian affiliate was banned from broadcasting last year, but the channel’s broadcasts originating in Qatar can be seen in Egypt.

[stefano]

Ziad Bahaa-Eddin, one real principled liberal in the government, has quit. He's cautious about his reasons for quitting (as he should be), but the act is eloquent enough.

[AlicetheKurious]

I hadn't checked in to RI for a while, so I missed these last two posts. First, the Al-Jazeera reporters were arrested, not to curtail their freedom, but because they broke the law. They entered Egypt as tourists, failed to provide press credentials, and operated secretly out of a room at the Marriott Hotel, where all kinds of electronic equipment was found that contradicted their statements about what they were doing in Egypt. They claimed that they "intended" to apply for press credentials, and that they weren't involved in broadcasting, but in merely covering the news, for broadcast by licensed international news bureaus. Very expensive, highly sophisticated broadcasting equipment was found in their hotel room. Furthermore, Al-Jazeera and other Brotherhood-controlled networks such as RASD and Yaqin, have consistently engaged in fabricating "news", their reporters have been caught paying individuals to recite from scripts provided by the reporters themselves, and their channels regularly host individuals who call for a US or NATO military invasion of Egypt. Their actions define them as criminals and enemy agents, not journalists. Perhaps that's the kind of thing you welcome in your own countries, and foreigners aren't expected to respect your country's laws, and the police are supposed to not do their job, but that would be your business.

Ziad Bahaa-Eddin, one real principled liberal in the government, has quit. He's cautious about his reasons for quitting (as he should be), but the act is eloquent enough.

Your hero is not so much a "liberal" as a "neo-liberal" -- his luminous resume includes a position as International Adviser for Goldman Sachs, and he was one of the main architects of Mubarak's predatory "economic liberalization" policy, a major contributing factor to the economic and social injustices that led to the January 25th Revolution. Oddly, though I have met and spoken with Ziad a few times, and in fact we are distantly related by marriage, I was not aware of any of this when I joined the party that he co-founded, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party. Founded less than three months after the January 25th Revolution in 2011, its clearly Leftist and Liberal platform attracted me, and indeed I worked quite hard to organize fund-raising for the party, which I naively believed was cash-poor.

Nobody was happier than I was, when Ziad was appointed to be Economic Adviser to the President, reportedly at the behest of another wolf in sheep's clothing, Mohamed El-Baradei. I expected that he, and Prime Minister Beblawy (another co-founder of the party), would finally implement the economic demands that so many of us have become hoarse repeating. These include discontinuing the crippling fuel subsidies to multinational corporations, estimated to be around US$10 billion per year, and using the savings to provide more subsidies and services to the poor. There is no logic to this massive drain on the public purse: these companies are engaged in fuel-intensive industries like steel processing and the manufacture of cement and chemical fertilizers, etc. They take advantage of huge government subsidies to run their highly-polluting industries in Egypt, then export their profits and sell their products either abroad or locally at international rates, and pay very low taxes. The Egyptian government imports fuel at international rates to provide it at a heavily-discounted rate to these corporations. It is robbery in broad daylight.

Instead, Ziad and his fellow "Leftist" Beblawy, have seemed hell-bent on cutting fuel subsidies to the POOR and to ordinary consumers. They've repeatedly threatened to "phase them out", citing the figure of LE 95 billion per year in total government fuel subsidies, while neglecting to mention that at least LE 65 billion of that is going to mostly foreign-owned corporations operating in Egypt. Since taking office, these two have pursued the exact same economic policies that Mubarak did, maximizing benefits to foreign predators at the expense of Egypt's poor. That was the first shock. The second shock was that, at the height of the Muslim Brotherhood's rampage early last fall, this "Economic Advisor" did absolutely nothing, other than to produce a "communique" in his name, proposing that the Muslim Brotherhood be integrated in process of planning Egypt's political future, in terms that were virtually identical to those used by the White House. Since then, he has traveled extensively to Europe, enjoyed all the perks of office, done absolutely zilch for the Egyptian people, and acted as though his job was to articulate US policy in Egypt.

By the time he finally resigned, Ziad had become the object of public ridicule and contempt, more active abroad than in Egypt. Needless to say, his frequent trips at great public expense to visit his colleagues in Europe and the US, all of which produced nothing for Egypt at all, provoked widespread public anger and demands for him to be fired. In a real sense, he had become a pariah, a recluse, and despite his friend Beblawy's refusal to fire him, his resignation was greeted with unanimous relief.

We have several genuinely principled liberals in the current government, and some of them, such as the Housing Minister Ibrahim Mehleb, have won the hearts and minds of Egyptians by rolling up their sleeves and working 18-hour days on behalf of their poorest constituents. The Minister of Education, the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Irrigation, the Minister of Labor, the Minister of Waqf (which is responsible for running the nation-wide network of mosques and lands and other properties endowed by centuries of rich individuals on behalf of the poor), and many others have earned the public's respect and appreciation for working hard and conscientiously under extremely difficult conditions. Then there are others, like Ziad and Beblawy, among others, who take chauffeur-driven rides to their luxuriously appointed offices, stay there from around 10:00 am to 2:00 or 3:00 pm doing nothing anybody seems to know about, then are driven home for the day. Though they are widely recognized as useless, the wisdom is that we can hold on until after the elections to have them replaced.

Ziad is available now, if you want him.

On Edit: Ziad Bahaa El-Din's official title was Presidential Adviser for International Cooperation.

[AlicetheKurious]

Video of a conference in May 2011, attended by Condaleezza Rice, James Glassman, Elliot Abrams and George W. Bush. The questioner is Ahmed Salah, founder of the April 6 Movement, currently living in the US and coordinating propaganda efforts there:



We're learning more every day.

[stefano]

Keeping responses in this thread in accordance with Alice’s request.

Your hero is not so much a "liberal" as a "neo-liberal" -- his luminous resume includes a position as International Adviser for Goldman Sachs, and he was one of the main architects of Mubarak's predatory "economic liberalization" policy, a major contributing factor to the economic and social injustices that led to the January 25th Revolution. Oddly, though I have met and spoken with Ziad a few times, and in fact we are distantly related by marriage, I was not aware of any of this when I joined the party that he co-founded, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party. Founded less than three months after the January 25th Revolution in 2011, its clearly Leftist and Liberal platform attracted me, and indeed I worked quite hard to organize fund-raising for the party, which I naively believed was cash-poor.

I know mostly him as representative of the SDP, to which I’m still broadly sympathetic, and I liked his efforts to include Brothers not suspected of any crimes in a dialogue (which you obviously didn’t). If he is a neo-liberal then good riddance, but you raise interesting points about Bahaa Eddin and Beblawy, and their apparent keenness to phase out the subsidies that help the poor and keep those that benefit the rich.

There is no logic to this massive drain on the public purse: these companies are engaged in fuel-intensive industries like steel processing and the manufacture of cement and chemical fertilizers, etc. They take advantage of huge government subsidies to run their highly-polluting industries in Egypt, then export their profits and sell their products either abroad or locally at international rates, and pay very low taxes. The Egyptian government imports fuel at international rates to provide it at a heavily-discounted rate to these corporations. It is robbery in broad daylight. […] Since taking office, these two have pursued the exact same economic policies that Mubarak did, maximizing benefits to foreign predators at the expense of Egypt's poor.

Well, of course there is a logic to it: the logic of elite accumulation. Robbery is right. So, why was Beblawy made PM? I don’t believe that Beblawy had any real executive autonomy or that he made any important decisions without running them by Sisi and the rest of the SCAF, but it’s still an important position. Whose decision was it to put him there, and what was the thinking behind it? Presumably Sisi and the SCAF met with some other heavyweights before naming Beblawy. Who were they, and why did they end up deciding on him? All the millionaires and billionaires who got fat under the NDP, what do you think they are pushing for now? Naguib Sawiris financed Tamarrod, right? What do you think that gets him under this government?

The above may be somewhat moot now that Beblawy’s been replaced but I read the fact that he was there are all as a sign of the power of the old NDP networks. I see you like Ibrahim Mehleb, I guess we’ll see what his government is like. Having been close to Ibrahim Soliman I wouldn’t assume he’s got clean hands.

And in reply to your post in the other thread:

You want to see what a "vicious mob" looks like? Here's a video of one of the Brotherhood's demonstrations last summer

Well thanks, I guess, but I don’t see why that is your response to the article about youth revolutionaries and journalists getting roughed up now. Are you saying that, because the MB sent mobs out to beat people up, you think it’s impossible that there is such a thing as a mob of Sisi supporters? How does that work?

You can believe whatever you like about "mobs of the Generalissimo's supporters beating up dissidents and hippies while the cops point and laugh," but lies do not constitute evidence. And they are indeed lies.

It is impossible for you to be this categorical about a negative. How can you be sure about what is not happening? Are you confident that you know exactly what is going on everywhere in Egypt all the time? Or can you be sure that a very pro-government media will unfailingly report assaults against people whom the great majority of Egyptians see as traitors, stool pigeons or spies? Of course not. So if people are not only reporting that it is happening, but that it is happening to them, and giving dates, times and places, then yes, I will believe them.

In fact you seem to be holding two contradictory positions: on the one hand you say that Dahshan’s article is a “total fabrication”, which implies that you believe that youth revolutionaries are free to go around mobilising for their cause without being bothered by anyone, and on the other hand you are firm in your position that the groups taking the line are traitors and spies out to further the US agenda in some way and that any decent person should oppose them. That opinion being very widely shared in Egypt, I find it surprising that you don’t think anyone, anywhere, has taken it a step further and shoved them around a bit.

You obviously think that, because April 6 received and receives (?) US government funding, any writer who takes a youth revolutionary line is suspect, and promoting some kind of MB/US agenda. That’s not valid at all. Many of these figures were vocal and visible throughout the time the MB was in government, and played a part in Tamarrod. I’m thinking of Amr Hamzawy in particular, but there are many others. Now Hamzawy is awaiting trial for “insulting the judiciary”, over something he wrote on Twitter. No controls on dissent or freedoms of speech, you say?

Nobody has been arrested for saying "no".

I was referring to Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh’s claim that three Strong Egypt members had been arrested at the time of the referendum for campaigning for a ‘no’ vote, I suppose that’s the same case you’re talking about. Where did you hear it was a vandalism case? And what about today’s news, that three other Strong Egypt members were sentenced to three years in jail for handing out flyers calling for a ‘no’ vote? Is that a lie, too?

This to-and-fro on people and events is interesting enough, but I think we’re really disagreeing about the nature of power, the inclinations of powerful men, and the extent to which hierarchical organisations can change their goals and tactics. We agree that the Tantawi-Enan government was instrumentalised by global imperialist forces. Unlike you, I simply think it’s impossible for the SCAF of 2011 to have been that, and for the SCAF of 2013 to represent everything that is good, true and noble in man. All that changed was that Tantawi and Enan retired. The rest of the military institutional structure remained almost intact, as did friendships and contacts built up with corrupt business interests and international capitalists over decades. So, while I’m still glad the MB is no longer in charge, I see a real danger that the same networks will use the military for exploitation as they did pre-2011, using all the state’s coercive power to act against dissidents. And, notwithstanding your posts here, I see signs of that in the news every day.

On that subject, I’d like to ask you again to recommend some news sources. And thanks again for posting here in such detail.

Edited for clarity in one place.
Edited a second time - the jailed Strong Egypt members aren't the ones whose arrest in January made the most news.

[stefano]

Forgot to bring this in, it contradicts Alice's assertion earlier that the Rafah crossing is open.
___________________

Hamas urges Egypt to reopen Rafah crossing with Gaza

GAZA, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Islamic Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip organized Sunday a sit-in at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, urging the Egyptian government to reopen the terminal which was closed after the ouster of Egypt's Islamist president Mohammed Morsi last year.

A number of Hamas officials and lawmakers demanded that Egypt fully reopen the terminal for the movement of stranded travelers and goods.

Since toppling Morsi, the new army-backed Egyptian government has been partly opening the Rafah crossing, allowing the entry of only patients, students in foreign countries and holders of foreign visas and passports.

Cairo accuses Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood group, of interfering in Egypt's affairs and aiding Islamist militants targeting the Egyptian army in neighboring Sinai Peninsula.

Consequently, Egypt has destroyed hundreds of smuggling tunnels dug under their shared border and closed the Rafah crossing, Gaza' s main door to the outside world.

Meanwhile, Hamas government announced recently that only 28,000 people left Gaza through the Rafah terminal in the second half of last year. However, the number of travelers in the first half of 2013 was 123,000.

Gaza has two crossings with Israel, but they are subject to strict restrictions since Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007.

Sit-in organizers said the five-day activity is also meant to protest the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza seven years ago.

"Egypt should open the crossing now, they (the Egyptians) should not blockade us like the Israelis," Hamas official, Hammad al-Regeb, told reporters during the sit-in.

Hamas members of the idle Palestinian parliament have also held a session at a tent in the protest in which they discussed the consequences of the crossing closure.

The sit-in coincides with a partial two-day opening of the crossing for Palestinian pilgrimages travelling to Saudi Arabia for a worshipping journey.

[stefano]

Manpower Minister Kamel Abu Eita has lost his job in a cabinet reshuffle. I liked Abu Eita, he just now managed to stop strikes by promising the minimum wage to workers (though it remains to be seen whether they'll get it - more strikes if they don't). His replacement is Nahed El-Ashry, who, the trade unions say, is "biased in favour of businessmen." The only logic for having replaced Abu Eita, as far as I can see, and with someone like Ashry to boot, is that the government is getting ready to act more harshly towards workers.

[AlicetheKurious]

So, why was Beblawy made PM? I don’t believe that Beblawy had any real executive autonomy or that he made any important decisions without running them by Sisi and the rest of the SCAF, but it’s still an important position. Whose decision was it to put him there, and what was the thinking behind it? Presumably Sisi and the SCAF met with some other heavyweights before naming Beblawy. Who were they, and why did they end up deciding on him?

You can believe what you like, but Biblawy was in charge and in fact managed to do quite a bit of damage before he was asked to resign by the president in a decision that was long, long overdue. Our current president is a good man, a great judge, but much too slow to respond to public demands, no matter how urgent.

On July 3, 2013, as the streets and squares across the length and breadth of Egypt were filled to capacity by citizens demanding to be liberated from the Muslim Brotherhood, an emergency meeting was called by the Defense Minister. Those attending this meeting were meant to represent the widest possible spectrum of political and social opinion. In fact, even the Muslim Brotherhood and their political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, were invited but they refused. The Salafist Nour Party did attend, however, along with representatives of all the major opposition parties, including those of the National Salvation Front, which had formed specifically to oppose the religious fascism of the Brotherhood and its allies; the head of the Church and of Al-Azhar; representatives of the youth-led Tamarod movement (all of whom also played a major role in the January 25th Revolution); Mohamed El-Baradei and his Movement for Change; the People's Popular Current, headed by Hamdeen Sabbahi, representatives of labor and farmers, women's groups, human rights activists, a number of independent and well-respected writers, etc.

At this meeting, the Defense Minister proposed that the people's demands be fulfilled as specified in the Tamarod forms that more than 22 million Egyptians had signed: that Morsi be ordered to step down, that the head of the Egyptian Supreme Court be asked to take over as Acting President and that new presidential elections be called. within 60 days (in which Morsy would be free to run). The Tamarod leaders and the others strenuously objected, arguing that it was too late, that the country was a powder-keg ready to explode, and that the people would not settle for anything less than the removal and arrest of Morsy, the replacement of the Muslim Brotherhood-imposed constitution, and then free and fair elections for a new parliament and president. Most of the others agreed, and El-Sisi was in fact out-voted.

Then, over the next few hours, they hammered out the "road-map" that we've been following since then. El-Sisi had nothing (at all!) to do with the selection of Biblawy as interim prime minister, nor with the appointments of the other ministers, most of whom were actually proposed by El-Baradei himself and approved by the others, led by the Tamarod leaders. This is a fact, reported by those who were there. Indeed, El-Baradei was offered the job first, but refused. He did accept the position of vice-president. One day, I'd really like to understand the secret of Biblawy's popularity with the Baradei people, and with the January 25th youths, who, you might be interested to know, had previously nominated him as their first choice to be the "revolution's" prime minister after Ahmed Shafiq was forced to resign back in February 2011 (the only reason he wasn't is that Biblawy was out of the country at the time and didn't answer his phone). The man is old, incompetent and a thinly-disguised neo-liberal to boot, and performed very poorly in his previous job as Minister of Finance and Deputy-Prime Minister during the ill-fated "revolutionary" government of the equally incompetent Essam Sharaf.

Anyway, you are allowing your prejudices to cloud your perception, assuming without any basis in fact that El-Sisi is in charge, and has been at least since last summer. This is simply not true. Those who know him and who have participated in the decision-making processes consistently describe him as a calm man of very few words, a respectful listener, someone who is very scrupulous about not overstepping the limits of his role as Defense Minister and head of the Armed Forces, responsible for defending Egypt's national security. He is a doer rather than a talker, and everything he does reflects his respect for the position he currently holds and his deep loyalty to Egypt and to the Egyptian people, which is the secret of his incredible popularity at the grass-roots level.

All the millionaires and billionaires who got fat under the NDP, what do you think they are pushing for now? Naguib Sawiris financed Tamarrod, right? What do you think that gets him under this government?

Tamarod didn't really take much financing -- it's not like there were billboards or tv commercials or full-page newspaper ads or any paid staff. The entire campaign consisted of a downloadable form from a web-site, photo-copied sheets of paper and millions of volunteers across the nation. I used to bring the filled-out forms to my dentists' clinic, or give them to my husband to deliver to the nearest regional office of one of the many political parties who'd made their premises available as collection points. Tamarod's own headquarters were located in vacant apartments lent by supporters or in spaces provided by opposition newspapers like the Wafd. That being said, it should be noted that Naguib Sawiris himself, along with other Christian businessmen, were explicitly targeted for assassination by the Brotherhood and their goons, and that during Morsi's year-long rule, many businesses were torched and/or vandalized in order to force their owners to sell cheaply to Brotherhood businessmen, especially Khairat El-Shater and others, whose fortunes swelled rather obscenely during that black period in Egypt's history.

As for now, a lot of us believe that Egypt has great potential for economic growth, which has been artificially stifled for decades. Now, more than ever, Egypt is ready to find its legs and stand up. It's only smart to want to be a part of that.

I see you like Ibrahim Mehleb, I guess we’ll see what his government is like. Having been close to Ibrahim Soliman I wouldn’t assume he’s got clean hands.

Actually, Mehleb, when he headed the giant public-sector firm The Arab Contractors, successfully defeated Ibrahim Soliman's persistent efforts to divide the company into several smaller firms and sell them off as part of the Mubarak governments' privatization policy. He's a fighter and very, very loyal to his country and his people. Also like El-Sisi, he's a doer not a talker, and I'm absolutely delighted to have him as our prime minister.

It is impossible for you to be this categorical about a negative. How can you be sure about what is not happening? Are you confident that you know exactly what is going on everywhere in Egypt all the time? Or can you be sure that a very pro-government media will unfailingly report assaults against people whom the great majority of Egyptians see as traitors, stool pigeons or spies? Of course not. So if people are not only reporting that it is happening, but that it is happening to them, and giving dates, times and places, then yes, I will believe them.

Whenever anything happens around here, you can be sure that someone's filming it with their cell-phone. Within minutes or hours, it's uploaded to Youtube and then "shared" all over social media. Even inside places you wouldn't think it would be possible to film, there's always somebody ready to go. Nobody is more enamored of filming or monitoring or recording events than the Brotherhood and their allies. In fact, they themselves have documented their own crimes, possibly for the benefit of their foreign sponsors, who like to know that they're getting their money's worth. When you have hundreds, or even thousands of videos documenting mob violence by the Brotherhood and their supporters, and on the other hand NONE showing mob violence against them, that should be a clue. The few purporting to document "massacres" and other abuses of Brotherhood supporters have without exception been exposed as fabrications (using images that later prove to be from Syria, Iraq, etc., or individuals pretending to be corpses, etc.) Uncorroborated testimony, especially from individuals who have no credibility and a definite ax to grind simply doesn't cut it, if you're trying to prove that a bunch of violent, terrorist fascists are actually victims, in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

In fact you seem to be holding two contradictory positions: on the one hand you say that Dahshan’s article is a “total fabrication”, which implies that you believe that youth revolutionaries are free to go around mobilising for their cause without being bothered by anyone, and on the other hand you are firm in your position that the groups taking the line are traitors and spies out to further the US agenda in some way and that any decent person should oppose them. That view being very widely shared in Egypt, I find it surprising that you don’t think anyone, anywhere, has taken it a step further and shoved them around a bit.

They may have, but there's no credible evidence that they did. On the other hand, there is a lot of credible evidence that the Brotherhood and other agents of the US are the ones spreading terror and mayhem, rampaging and vandalizing property, etc.

You obviously think that, because April 6 received and receives (?) US government funding, any writer who takes a youth revolutionary line is suspect, and promoting some kind of MB/US agenda. That’s not valid at all. Many of these figures were vocal and visible throughout the time the MB was in government, and played a part in Tamarrod. I’m thinking of Amr Hamzawy in particular, but there are many others. Now Hamzawy is awaiting trial for “insulting the judiciary”, over something he wrote on Twitter. No controls on dissent or freedoms of speech, you say?

Amr Hamzawy is double-faced sleazebag, a mercenary twit whose bread is buttered abroad, not here (not for lack of trying). He has tried to be everything to everybody, to get himself a piece of every pie, but has failed and now nobody can stand him (except, possibly, his colleagues at Carnegie or other foreign associates). He was a live guest for several hours on an evening talk-show in Cairo just this week, and has traveled a lot recently, so he's not under arrest or anything. If he was "awaiting trial", he would either be in jail or prevented from leaving the country, as far as I know.

I was referring to Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh’s claim that three Strong Egypt members had been arrested at the time of the referendum for campaigning for a ‘no’ vote, I suppose that’s the same case you’re talking about. Where did you hear it was a vandalism case?

It was covered by Ibrahim Eissa, one of Egypt's most credible and experienced journalists, a genuine liberal with a long history of activism against oppression in all its forms.

And what about today’s news, that three other Strong Egypt members were sentenced to three years in jail for handing out flyers calling for a ‘no’ vote? Is that a lie, too?

I don't know: the article you cite says that they were sentenced to three years but released the next day, and fined LE 500 (less than a hundred dollars), which doesn't make sense. If they were sentenced to three years, why were they released? They couldn't have been charged with "distributing flyers", because that is not a crime under Egyptian law; contrary to what you might think, it's not possible in Egypt to be tried for a crime that doesn't exist in the books. Why doesn't the article cite the actual criminal charges against them? Aswat Masreya, like Jadaliyya and Mada Masr and a lot of others set up by god knows who, are not at all credible sources, but propaganda outlets specifically targeting foreign readers.

On that subject, I’d like to ask you again to recommend some news sources. And thanks again for posting here in such detail.

The reason I didn't answer that before is that it's very hard. I tried, but I couldn't think of a single, especially English-language news source that I can recommend without serious reservations. On the contrary. It's as though I asked you, if I wanted to know what's really happening with the US, who are the real decision-makers, what is the US really after with its foreign and domestic policies, what news sources should I go to? In Egypt, there is a vast, very hungry audience for "news" and countless media competing to satisfy it. As a result, you get a lot of sensationalist headlines and plenty of speculation from "high-level sources who asked not to be identified", tons and tons of propaganda from all sides, and that's not counting all the bullshit from social media. Personally, I consume an enormous amount of it all, every day, constantly filtering it all through a series of questions:

1) To what extent is the source reputable and accountable? For example, is the reporter clearly identified and does he/she have a reputation to protect? Does he/she cite individuals qualified to given an informed opinion and first-hand testimony, or merely opinionated individuals and "professional activists"? Does the source have a well-defined agenda, based on his/her history?
2) What is the evidence? (For example, if I see and hear someone saying something on the air, this is more credible than an attributed quote). If they cite a published report, I search for it and check.
3) Is there other corroborating evidence? (If the government announces that new road-building projects have been launched or completed, do I see this on the ground?)
4) I also have a wide network of friends and acquaintances, many of them involved in some aspect of something (for example, some have known or worked with individuals involved in certain events, or they themselves are participants or witnesses) -- in other words, gossip. Also subject to filtration.
5) If I'm dealing with an editorial opinion or an "analysis", does it make sense in light of known facts, is the argument logically sound? Do they offer solutions or just engage in knocking everything?
6) In televised interviews, is the person straightforward or evasive? Does he/she respect the audience's intelligence, does he/she cite verifiable facts, or try to manipulate viewers with empty slogans and demagogic emotional appeals? Etc.

I'm really sorry I can't be more helpful. As I said, I take in so much data, from such a wide variety of sources (including sources very hostile to both the army and whatever current government which, believe it or not, includes a number of current-affairs programs on tv), then refine it through discussions and personal observations, then collate it with new facts as they emerge. It's a dynamic, interactive process which many other Egyptians have been forced into, precisely because there is no single source where everything is ready-to-eat.

As for Gaza, the border crossing was open, but unfortunately Hamas controls it from the other side, and was abusing its power to control who got to cross by sending only its own loyalists and preventing many with an urgent need from even reaching the border. The security situation in northern Sinai is atrocious, as a result, with many Egyptian policemen and soldiers ambushed and killed, frequently by infiltrators from Gaza, on a nearly daily basis. A lot of contraband and weapons are caught at the border, but not everything. You'd be amazed at how ingenious some smugglers are. It's a huge dilemma, and the solution could very well be the rapidly-growing Tamarod movement to overthrow Hamas in Gaza (since they categorically refuse to hold the long-overdue elections), which is showing great promise.

Manpower Minister Kamel Abu Eita has lost his job in a cabinet reshuffle. I liked Abu Eita, he just now managed to stop strikes by promising the minimum wage to workers (though it remains to be seen whether they'll get it - more strikes if they don't). His replacement is Nahed El-Ashry, who, the trade unions say, is "biased in favour of businessmen." The only logic for having replaced Abu Eita, as far as I can see, and with someone like Ashry to boot, is that the government is getting ready to act more harshly towards workers.

Kamal Abu-Eita is a really, really good guy, who's been through the wringer. He's an example of a decent, sincere long-time labor activist who found himself way over his head once he was given actual responsibility for coming up with feasible solutions rather than making demands. He was trapped between the workers' genuine, urgent needs and the reality of how few resources are currently available to satisfy them. As a result, he wasn't able to accomplish anything or please anybody. Without exception, all the labor strikes are taking place in public sector companies that have been bleeding money for years (if not decades), part of the conspiracy to destroy the huge public sector companies that drove the rapid economic expansion and social development of the Nasserist era from 1955 to 1967 and to force Egypt into economic/political/military dependence. Most of the workers, slowly starving within factories that are rusting away, are demanding "profit shares" and "incentives" that previous governments have promised but failed to deliver (except to the series of corrupt and incompetent managers). A lot of money has already been thrown at the workers to pacify them, money that the government doesn't even have, and has been forced to borrow. In any case it's a drop in the ocean and all down the drain unless these companies are radically rehabilitated and renovated. I have very high hopes that this will happen, but certainly not all at once. It's a big mess, which will not be solved by strikes, sit-ins and demands, but by a comprehensive plan to revive Egypt's industrial and agricultural base within an all-encompassing economic re-haul, something that most Egyptians recognize as an urgent matter of national security. As I said, this won't happen all at once, but I believe it will happen sooner than might seem possible.