Aida is not an experienced writer, nor a political analyst; she's just a regular Egyptian who was catalyzed into writing by her frustration at the outrageous Western coverage of events in Egypt. Because she has the advantage of being able to write in English, she decided to start a blog that reflects the Egyptians' own narrative, which is rarely heard in that language.
"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
AlicetheKurious wrote:Aida is not an experienced writer, nor a political analyst; she's just a regular Egyptian who was catalyzed into writing by her frustration at the outrageous [...]
Thanks, Alice, and please thank her too. And I thank God neither she nor you is salaried for your writings. Only non-employees can speak and write freely from both the heart and the head.
It's the same thing, the same thing happening everywhere now. Its always been the same thing, nobody has to be an egghead to know it and say it.
- That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the opposite of that that is really life.
- What? says Alf.
- Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now.
Act local, think global.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966
General Sisi is no saviour for Egypt’s non-Islamists
Daily News Egypt / October 26, 2013 /
By Nervana Mahmoud
Quick glances at the events that lead to the 30 June protests and the subsequent army take-over on 3 July are enough for any observer to understand that Sisi’s success resulted mainly in his ability to garner a wide coalition against the Muslim Brotherhood. This support included a wide section of the political elite, police, media, judiciary, artists and the general public.
The police and army are now coordinating their moves for the first time since January 2011 and are unleashing their coercive forces to subdue the Muslim Brotherhood and their alliance. Does that mean that the non-Islamists are winning, or even thriving within “Sisi’s coalition?” The simple answer is no. This comes about for various reasons.
For a start, it is not a homogenous coalition. In fact, the opposite is true, and the subgroups are only united by their anti-Muslim Brotherhood stance. When considering all else, they have different visions and intentions. While some aspire for democracy, equality, and freedom, others are illiberal and are willing to welcome autocracy as a small price to regain their pre-25 January Revolution comfort zone.
The resignation of ElBaradei was an early sign of the fragility of this coalition. The disputed protest law is another indication. This law has generated widespread opposition from parties that were previously united on 30 June, from the 6th of April to Tamarod, and even reaching groups in the right wing. All have expressed their opposition to the Protest Law, and in a way have started to re-establish some common ground with the Muslim Brotherhood. This common ground may not be enough to heal past enmity, but is enough for the Brothers to feel—and claim— that they are not alone.
Secondly, old habits die hard. Instead of learning from past mistakes, the non-Islamist, secular-leaning parties have continued with their failed pre-30 June approach. They mainly focus on talk show discussions, instead of doing the tougher work of building support at a grassroots level. The elites still prefer their cities and beach resorts, and are not keen on taking tedious trips to southern Egypt or rural areas where the support for ex-president Morsi is still high. ElBaradei’s Dostour Party continues to struggle with divisions, a non-surprise after their leader left Egypt following his fallout with the army.
There is no evidence that other parties, such as the Wafd or Tagammu, are gaining any additional popularity after 3 July. The inability of the non-Islamist party to reform and their failure to reach out to non-urban provinces will continue to hamper their ability to benefit from a Muslim Brotherhood defeat.
Third, the social void continues. Thus far, neither the interim government nor non-Islamist political parties are willing to draft a plan to counter the Brotherhood’s social network, the core base of its political success. It is one thing to officially ban the Brotherhood’s charitable organisation; it is another to provide the beneficiaries with a viable alternative. The lack of strong civil society that supports the poor and the needy will always allow the Brotherhood to maintain their links with their loyal grassroots supporters.
In fact, I am not aware of any non-Islamist public figure or politicians who have visited Dalga, Kerdassa, or other tense areas, even following the end of the security operations there. The burned churches in the south are in desperate need of attention from those who rail day and night against sectarianism in the local media. Poor and impoverished villages around the country are crying for attention, yet no one from those who applauded the decision to close the Brotherhood’s NGO seem to be interested in finding ways to fill the void.
The rise of general Sisi’s popularity is partly due to his own appeal among the public, who see him as someone with the leadership skills that are necessary to rule Egypt at this crucial time. It is also very indicative of the weakness and the fragility of non-Islamist groups and the parties that want to hide behind the strongman to conceal their own inability to capitalise from the Muslim Brotherhood’s downfall.
The weakness of the non-Islamists in Egypt is quiet spectacular, considering how their Islamists opponents insist on perpetuating their own self-defeating policies, continuous protests and disruption, and the absence of any articulation of a “clear-end-point.” In fact, they have even rejected mediation efforts by Professor Kamal Abu El Magd, whose suggestions could have provided a true reconciliation path.
Are non-Islamists truly committed to fulfilling the aspirations of the millions who protested on 30 June? If the answer is yes, then they must have a serious look at their dismal performance post-30 June, and understand that Army Chief General Sisi will not save their political careers. They must stop their lazy approach to politics, put in sweat and labour at the grassroots level, fight against repression, injustice, radicalism, and rebuild a new, strong civil society; otherwise, Egypt will remain subdued by regressive forces fighting over its ruin and wreckage.
So there is an Egyptian Onion. Follow link, it's got hotlinks to back up some of the stuff, such as that Amr Moussa is now heading the constitution-writing commission. He's the former Arab League president whom Alice back in 2011 on this thread predicted would be the winner of the presidential election. And here her prediction comes true in a different form. He's not going to be Washington, but he gets to be Madison.
Egypt revolutionary socialist gives up on the act of protesting
Written by makarona
Sun, 11/10/2013 - 14:49
Revolutionary socialist Kareem Sawragy is angry at the state of Egypt, but the former activist has no intention of channeling that anger through the act of protesting, nor even through protest-y tweets ending with #FuckMB, #FuckSisi, #FuckPolice, #FuckTheSpermThatWonTheFierceCompeitionThatFertilizedTheEggsThatBroughtUsOurLeaders, and other common hashtags that communicate the political rage of the true Egyptian revolutionary.
“No, I am done with all that,” explains Sawragy, who has been cooped up in his bedroom shooting darts at a portrait of Adam Smith ever since Amre Moussa was announced as the head of the constitution-drafting committee.
“I spent the last three years trying to organize labour movements to have them strike for their right to bread, freedom and social gatherings at the Gezira Club,” he says. “Now the only thing that will make them strike is if Sisi refuses to run for president.” He holds a gun to his head at this point before shouting: “I mean, are you fucking kidding me?!”
Sawragy, who has been on Prozac ever since the presidential race ended with a choice between Morsi and Shafiq last year, says that he can’t help but see a direct correlation between protests and gradually worsening options.
“First it was Morsi or Shafiq, now it’s Sisi or …” – he breaks off crying and laughing while shaking his head and mumbling, “There is no ‘or.’”
He notes that the first recorded act of protest was when Lucifer protested against being asked by God to bow down to Adam. “It’s all been downhill since that very first protest,” he laments.
Sawragy also points out that protesting has led the current Egyptian government, which is in existence largely thanks to protests, to issue a draft law effectively banning protests, with rumours of another draft law to ban protesting against the draft law that effectively bans protests.
Under the new regulations, protestors would have to notify the Interior Ministry at least one week before holding a demonstration, with all participating men having to issue a feesh we tashbeeh, and all women having to undergo a virginity test beforehand, as ordered by Sisi, who is also a world famous anti-rape campaigner.
For revolutionary socialists that remain more optimistic than Sawragy, Egypt has nevertheless made significant gains over the past 3 years. But for Sawragy, despite countless sit-ins, thousands of deaths, and hours of mind-numbing Morsi speeches, ultimately, Egypt still placed a bird under custody the other month for spying. And then ate it.
“What more can I say?” Sawragy says, shaking his head in despair.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline: I am by virtue of its might divine, The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
Egypt's Al-Ahly football club on Tuesday suspended forward Ahmed Abdel Zaher from next month's FIFA Club World Cup for celebrating a goal with a salute in support of Islamists.
Al-Ahly said they would also sell the 28-year-old at the end of the season and deprive him of prize money from the Cairo club's victory Sunday in the final of the African Champions League.
Abdel Zaher held up four fingers when he scored Al-Ahly's second goal in the 4-0 win over South Africa's Orlando Pirates.
The four-finger salute has been adopted by supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who the army overthrew on July 3.
The player has apologised to fans for the political stunt, and said in a statement that he would be willing to accept whatever punishment the club metes out.
Al-Ahly's football committee had on Monday recommended Abdel Zaher be suspended from the FIFA Club World Cup in Morocco, following uproar in the media.
Egypt remains deeply polarised between Morsi's supporters and the military-installed government four months after his ouster.
More than 1,000 people, mostly Islamists, have died in clashes since, many of them killed when police dispersed a protest camp in Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya square.
The square is named after an eighth century Muslim holy woman, but Rabaa also means "fourth" in Arabic, giving rise to the four-finger salute Abdel Zaher flashed in the game.
An Egyptian martial artist, Mohamed Youssef, was banned from playing for two years after he wore a shirt with the sign to accept his gold medal in a tournament in Russia last month.
Egypt's antiquities fall victim to political chaos
CAIRO (AP) - The century-old home of Egypt's mummies and King Tutankhamun's treasures is trying to make the best out of the worst times of political turmoil. But the Egyptian Museum is taking a hammering on multiple levels, from riots on its doorstep to funding so meager it can't keep up paper clip supplies for its staff.
The museum, a treasure trove of pharaonic antiquities, has long been one of the centerpieces of tourism to Egypt. But the constant instability since the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak has dried up tourism to the country, slashing a key source of revenue. Moreover, political backbiting and attempts to stop corruption have had a knock-on effect of bringing a de facto ban on sending antiquities on tours to museums abroad, cutting off what was once a major source of funding for the state.
The repeated eruption of protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square, where the museum is located, has also scared away visitors. Over the summer there were the giant rallies that led to the July 3 military coup ousting Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. In recent weeks, protesters have returned to Tahrir, now venting their anger at the military-backed government that took its place.
"Tahrir Square is considered as the birthplace of the Egyptian revolution, and the museum is like a thermometer. It gets affected by the political situation at the square," said Sayed Amer, the director of the Egyptian Museum, in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
The antiquities minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, tried to put a brave face, saying at least the museum remains open.
"Sometimes the square is closed but we keep the museum open," he said.
On recent visits to the museum by the AP, there were only a handful of foreign visitors, and none at its most prized exhibits of mummies and King Tut's treasures.
The museum is trying to make the most of the dry times. It has launched an extensive renovation for the palatial, 111-year-old salmon-colored building. The décor will get a makeover, and lighting and security systems will be upgraded in an overhaul, in cooperation with Germany, costing more than $4.3 million.
Plans are also being drawn up to demolish the neighboring former headquarters of Mubarak's National Democratic Party, which was burned during the uprising, to create an open-air, Nile-side exhibition garden for the museum.
King Tut's treasures will be moved to a new Grand Egyptian Museum under construction near the Giza pyramids, due to be finished in 2015. The plan reflects in part the embarrassment of riches Egypt enjoys in pharaonic artifacts: The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir is so overflowing with objects that more than half its collection sits in storage in its basement - in less than ideal conditions - meaning there's plenty to draw visitors to both museums.
Amid the budget crunch, staffers are trying to find other sources of revenue.
Yasmin El-Shazly, the head of the Documentation Department that tracks the museum's 200,000 items, set up a fundraising mechanism to bring in donations for the museum independently of the government.
Donations collected by the Friends of the Egyptian Museum group will help fund academic research in the museum, raise awareness of its projects and empower Egyptian experts and museum's staff, who have gone without salaries for months.
"We don't even have the money to buy office supplies like paper clips and pens, and pay for computer maintenance," El-Shazly said. "It's always been difficult because the money generated by the museum went to the government and rarely came back to us. But now, with no money coming from tourism, it's worse than ever."
Ibrahim said the ministry's revenues, including the entrance fees from tourist sites, fell from 111 million Egyptian pounds ($16 million) in October 2010 to 7 million Egyptian pounds ($1.14 million) in October 2013.
Even more detrimental, few if any of Egypt's precious antiquities are touring abroad.
A visit in October by a team of experts from the British Museum resulted only in words of hope for a renewed cooperation in the future and some training opportunities for Egyptian staff in London. Japanese exhibition organizers interested in a tour exhibit for objects from the King Tut collection left Egypt with no deal.
Such foreign tours were a lucrative revenue source, but virtually ground to a halt after Egypt's chief archaeologist during Mubarak's rule, Zahi Hawass, was forced to resign in 2011 on corruption allegations. Hawass denied the allegations, and he was not charged.
Last year, Morsi's government cut short a Cleopatra-themed exhibit on tour in the United States after a Cairo court ruled that some of its pieces are too unique to allow out of the country and had to return immediately.
Antiquities officials are now reluctant to sign any deals with exhibitions abroad for fear of being accused of corruption - or worse, of being unpatriotic for sending away Egypt's patrimony, amid the nationalist wave sweeping Egypt following the July coup.
The Cleopatra exhibit toured four U.S. cities, starting with Philadelphia's Franklin Institute in June 2010. It included artifacts ranging from tiny gold coins to a pair of towering eight-ton granite figures, raised by French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio from submerged ruins off the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.
Ordering it home lost Egypt millions of dollars, said Lotfi Gazy, the museum's antiquities affairs director.
Egypt was earning $450,000 dollars from each city the exhibit traveled to, plus $1 million for every 100,000 visitors and a 10 percent cut from merchandizing sales, Gazy said.
"It was a disaster for us," Gazy said. No new contract has been signed since then.
Deadly explosion rocks police station in Egyptian city of Mansoura
At least 14 people have been killed and 120 others injured after a car bomb exploded at a police building in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura, Egypt's Ministry of Interior said.
The explosion took place at 1:10 a.m. local time Tuesday at Dakhalya security headquarters in Mansoura, causing the collapse of parts of the five-floor building. Mansoura, the capital of the governorate of Dakhalya, is about 84 miles northeast of Cairo.
Five high-ranking police officers were among those to die in the blast. The head of security for Dakhalya, Sami el Mihi, was wounded in the blast, and two of his aides were killed, security sources told AFP.
The bombing comes weeks before Egypt is to hold a referendum on a new constitution that is billed by the country's military-installed authorities as the first step toward democratic rule after the army ousted President Mohamed Morsi in July.
The explosion was felt up to 12 miles away and badly damaged nearby buildings, security sources told AFP. Police have evacuated many of the surrounding buildings because they may be unstable.
Initial information indicates that the perpetrators appeared to have inside information about who was at a meeting in the building.
Although no group claimed responsibility for the attack, after the bombing, Egypt's Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi declared the Muslim Brotherhood movement a "terrorist" group. The move could be seen as a further push by the interim authorities to isolate the movement ahead of the referendum.
Attacks on soldiers and policemen have sharply risen in Egypt since the army ousted Morsi after mass demonstrations against his rule. Most of the attacks have occurred in the Sinai, which borders Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip. About 200 soldiers have died in the Sinai since Morsi's ouster.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in a government crackdown on Morsi's supporters, mostly from the Brotherhood.
I've been meaning to write a long post for months, since early October at least, but events have been moving so fast every time I wanted to write about one event it was superseded by another. Beginning with the dispersal of the camps, the MB launched a wave of violence across Egypt that included torching and looting dozens of churches and two mosques as well as government buildings and schools; at the same time, they'd go on marches and shoot live gunfire into apartment windows and streets, throw molotov cocktails and smash cars and shop windows. By early September, as the authorities cracked down on sources of funding and organizers of these rampages, the MB were reduced to small marches on Fridays, which were met with hostility and resistance by residents. By late September, they had dwindled to a few marches in out-of-the way villages and back streets, and the were mostly made up of brainwashed school-children incubated in their indoctrination centers under the guise of Brotherhood-run schools and orphanages. Al-Jazeera's wall-to-wall coverage of these marches became increasingly blurry, and did not include a sound-track, but it still could not disguise the extreme youth of the "demonstrators". At the same time, we began to see the kind of terrorism that plagues Iraq and Syria and Lebanon, involving suicide bombings and car and truck bombs. One exploded in the heavily-populated Cairo suburb of Nasr City, which targeted the Interior Minister's car and missed, but killed and maimed several policemen and innocent bystanders, including children.
This began to change as we approached October 6, a very significant national holiday for Egyptians, which celebrates the launching of the October 6 War to liberate Sinai from Israeli occupation. The Israelis had built the Bar-Lev Line, a massive multi-layered barrier on the east bank of the Suez Canal between occupied Sinai and the rest of Egypt, which international military experts had deemed impossible to breach except possibly by nuclear bombs. This video doesn't mention that Israel had fortified the Bar-Lev Line with under-water pipes of napalm, which Egyptian frogmen had secretly blocked with quick-drying cement in preparation for the crossing.
The preparations for the war involved a wide team effort, not only by the military but by large segments of the Egyptian population whose participation in diverse ways made the victory possible. The ingenious idea of using high-pressure water pumps to cut through the enormous sand barriers was thought up by a young Coptic engineer, a junior officer who had seen what water could do while working on the Aswan High Dam. At the same time, it was crucial that the ever-wary Israeli intelligence be persuaded that nothing was being planned and that Egypt had neither the intention nor the capability of launching an attack. The water pumps, for example, were imported using a large number of businessmen, ostensibly under contract to various fire departments across the country. The media collaborated to portray Egyptian society as demoralized, fragmented, economically weakened and militarily unprepared for war. Egyptian double agents who had allowed themselves to be recruited by Israel confirmed this. Even small farmers collaborated in keeping the troops fed while obscuring their numbers and locations. Somehow, extreme secrecy was maintained despite the number and diversity of those who participated. In a very real sense, the October 6th crossing was a great victory by and for the Egyptian people.
Mubarak headed the air-force during the October War, and during his rule, the annual celebrations ascribed the victory to him and him alone; under his rule, the many real heroes of this complex operation were deliberately neglected and ignored. After the January 2011 Revolution, there was a renewed interest in the surviving soldiers and officers, and in setting the history straight. October 6th, 2012, was to be a great national celebration of the victory and those who had made it possible. Instead, what Egyptians got was a big slap in the face from Morsy and his Brotherhood. The "celebration" was held inside the Cairo Stadium, amid tight security. Only card-carrying members of the Brotherhood were allowed to attend, and Morsy's specially-invited guests. None of the armed forces' high-ranking officers were invited, nor was Sadat's family; instead, the guests of honor were Sadat's convicted killers and their terrorist gangs, who waved large banners of the Gamaa Islameya, the group that carried out his assassination. Morsy gave a speech that rambled on and on about his own entirely fictional achievements, which included solving Egypt's traffic and economic problems (which had actually deteriorated even further during a few short months), and accused his opponents of impiety. It was an ugly, shameful display that provoked widespread outrage and disgust among Egyptians.
Fast forward to October 2013: the Egyptian people kicked Morsy and his gang of terrorists out of power, but there are still armed pockets of his supporters, sustained mostly by financial and logistical support from Qatar and Turkey, via these two countries' embassies, and by their sponsors in the US and EU. The Egyptians, army and people, decide to hold a real celebration of October 6, complete with massive public rallies in Tahrir and other squares across the country, and fireworks and a special ceremony attended by top government and military officials, representatives of Egypt's artistic community, and especially by former presidents Sadat's and Nasser's families. For over a week, the television carried interviews with surviving officers and soldiers, who finally got to tell their stories. Rarely or never-before seen footage of the battle was aired. The Brotherhood announced that they would "spoil" the Egyptians' celebration, and that they would occupy Tahrir and other major squares. They warned that anybody who participated would be risking his or her life, and advised people to stay home.
We'd been doing a LOT of that lately. First, because of the curfew that was enforced after the camps' dispersal and the ensuing nation-wide violent rampage, and then because of the weekly Friday marches which popped up randomly, striking out at whoever and whatever was in their path, then disappearing. Friday has traditionally been the day for families to get together, and/or enjoy a day of relaxation and fun because it's the one day of the week when traffic is light. Most shops, restaurants, clubs and amusement parks remain open, but businesses, banks, government offices and schools are closed. My husband and I used to really enjoy going out on Fridays, for lunch with friends or going across town to areas that are difficult to reach on other days because of the traffic. From mid-August to the first days of October, however, we had been stuck at home, not willing to risk being caught by one of the Brotherhood's rampages which had returned with a vengeance as October 6 approached. On October 1st, they'd tried to invade Tahrir Square, armed with rocks, molotov cocktails, rifles and knives, but they'd been expelled first by the residents and then by security forces, who set up check-points at all the entrances and assured the public that the square would be secured for the upcoming celebrations.
October 4th was a Friday; the weather was lovely. A friend of ours suggested we meet for lunch in a downtown restaurant not far from Tahrir with a group of visiting German-Egyptians who were exploring how they could contribute to Egypt's renewal. We hesitated, but then figured that the Brotherhood would be reserving their strength for the big day on Sunday, October 6, and this might be a rare chance for us to go downtown.
Traffic was indeed light that morning, and downtown was peaceful. We had a lovely lunch and lively conversation and were enjoying ourselves very much, until someone came into the restaurant to tell us that the Brotherhood had marched to the eastern entrance of Tahrir Square and were shooting live gunfire at the security forces and trying to penetrate Tahrir to set up camp. Once we'd heard the gunshots for ourselves, we decided it was time to go. When we tried to leave downtown, we found that all the exits and bridges were blocked by police. A police officer who looked like he hadn't slept in days explained that the direct route we'd normally take was too dangerous and out of the question. He suggested that we detour and make our way through back streets to go around the city and then double back to head home. It took us nearly 3 hours to get home, instead of 30-40 minutes, but at least we were safe. That night, things calmed down as the army enforced the curfew (which on Friday began at 7:00 pm).
On Sunday October 6th, the Brotherhood still had not managed to penetrate Tahrir, and several thousand brave Egyptians did go and enjoyed a nice celebration, but across greater Cairo, the Brotherhood launched a multi-pronged attack to exhaust the security forces: while some were attacking the entrance to Tahrir, other small but armed marches were taking place all over the city. Wherever they went, they smashed cars and shop windows and threw molotov cocktails; some shopkeepers and residents decided to take matters into their own hands and attacked them with makeshift weapons and in some cases guns. One shopkeeper explained that the last time the Brothers had marched through his street, they'd left nothing behind but ruins, and had killed six of the residents. People were fed up beyond belief, and more than ready to hit back, and they did. Several dozen members of the Brotherhood were killed across the city; estimates vary between 34 and 53. The police were overwhelmed, with attacks taking place from one end of the enormous city and its suburbs, to the other. In Maadi, a south-western upper middle-class suburb terrorists shot a rocket into the city's satellite dish transmitting station, then escaped before police could get there. In northern Sinai, a massive explosion rocked a police station and killed several policemen. It was a bloody day, and not as many people showed up to celebrate October 6 as would have liked to, but the official celebration went forward as planned and was watched by millions on tv.
The international media coverage focused on the Brotherhood members killed that day, with very little or no context. Even the truck-bomb in northern Sinai and the rocket shooting inside a heavily-populated Cairo suburb, and the fires set across the city by the Brothers were hardly mentioned, if at all. But that day did mark the severe decline of the murderous and destructive Friday marches. They've been replaced by daily "student protests" inside university walls, where the law prevents the police from entering until AFTER a crime has been committed, and even so, only at the explicit request of the university president (in which case, it's usually far too late). The Brotherhood's students have smashed and destroyed millions of dollars' worth of university property and physically attacked students and professors with wooden sticks, knives and iron pipes, including the dean of pharmacology at a university in Sharqeya, who died last weekend. In recent weeks, the main perpetrators inside the universities have been female students, who have attacked their fellow students, vandalized property and torn up and set fire to examination papers.
Although our general neighborhood, far from the urban centers, is relatively untouched, it's heartbreaking when we do get into Cairo, to see the amount of vandalism that the Muslim Brotherhood have left behind wherever they go, even on beautiful historic buildings. The government is working at a frantic pace to repair and rebuild and repaint, but simply hasn't been able to keep up. Policemen and army officers are the main target of their worst violence, with an average of nearly 60 officers and men killed per month since mid-August. Hundreds of civilians have been left permanently disfigured and crippled by the Brotherhood's rampages, and still the weapons keep pouring in, mostly smuggled in from the Libyan and Sudanese borders, but also from the few remaining tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, and also on ships from Turkey. Individuals related to the Brotherhood are being caught with large sums of US dollars, Euros or Egyptian pounds in cash, which are used to pay participants in the Brotherhoods' attacks. One girl was turned in to police by her own uncle, with whom she was staying, when he found more than 8 million Egyptian pounds in cash (the equivalent of more than US$ 1 million) inside her backpack. She told police that her friend, the daughter of Brotherhood bigwig Khairat el-Shater, had given the money to her to distribute among her fellow female students at Al-Azhar University, to pay them for their participation in the "protests". According to the "protesters", they are determined to shut down the colleges and universities and to prevent exams from taking place.
There is a definite method to their madness: first, they need to keep projecting a false image that Egyptian society is divided and in violent upheaval, when the reality is that a few thousand members of a criminal, fascist gang are doing everything possible to terrorize and beat Egyptians into submission. They are a few thousands, but we are more than 90 million strong, so that's not going to happen. The media images and the random vandalism and destruction are, however, slowing down Egypt's economic recovery, including its suffering tourist industry. Secondly, they are frantically trying to frighten Egyptians into staying home and not voting in the constitutional referendum. Again, that's not going to happen. Third, they are trying to provoke security forces into committing the kind of "massacre" that they falsely claimed occurred during the break-up of their camps, so they can have a REAL atrocity to use as a pretext for foreign military intervention in Egypt by their allies. Though they've managed to convey this image in various international media through well-paid public relations firms, apparently they failed to produce any genuine evidence to back up their claims. Finally, they're trying to provoke the government and the security forces into paranoia so they begin clamping down on people's legitimate freedoms and otherwise lashing out, to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that Egypt is once again becoming a "police-state". Once again, they have failed, although now it is the people who are becoming very frustrated with the government's and security force's failure to just round them up, law or no law, and lock them away where they can't do any more damage. People are getting sick and tired of the Prime Minister constantly evading the widespread public demand to have the Muslim Brotherhood officially declared a terrorist organization. It doesn't help that the only two previous Egyptian prime ministers to do so, were both assassinated by the Brotherhood.
In response to public pressure, the government did pass a law regulating demonstrations. Especially given the extreme violence and destructiveness of the marches that have been plaguing our country, the law was perfectly reasonable, clause per clause identical to most laws governing demonstrations in countries around the world, and more lenient than many, including that of the US. But it was greeted by an international outcry that included UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon's and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' statements of "deep concern" that the Egyptian government was suppressing people's freedom to demonstrate. Three of the "stars" of the April 6th movement loudly announced that they didn't intend to respect this law, and that they would demonstrate in front of the Senate, which is only a few meters away from Tahrir Square. They were quickly joined by a few dozen members of April 6 and other related groups such as the so-called "Revolutionary Socialists" (a tiny but noisy group whose leaders are, oddly enough, almost all US-educated and whose "socialism" consists of launching provocative acts against the Egyptian army and police and then screaming loudly that they are being oppressed), and by hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members, who headed into Tahrir Square and went on an orgy of vandalism in which a pedestal set up to hold a sculpture commemorating the January 25th Revolution was destroyed, trees were uprooted, buildings were defaced, the Egyptian flag was burned, and the entrance lobby of the Arab League Headquarters was trashed. The three instigators, Ahmed Maher, Mohamed Adel and Ahmed Douma, were arrested and later tried and sentenced to 3 years in prison and a fine of 50,000 LE (around US$ 8,000).
Suddenly they became global symbols of the struggle against a police state, and their trial was a virtual who's-who of Western diplomats, who expressed their full support for these assholes. The Egyptian government responded by releasing tapes to the media of phone conversations between Mohamed Adel and Ahmed Maher, in which they discuss their training in Serbia and their association with CANVAS. In another, they talk about all the money they're getting from various European and American political and activist organizations (including the International Republican Institute, which is headed by John McCain), and how to make sure that they keep it all for themselves and their friends, etc. Another tape has Ahmed Maher receiving a phone call from a businessman closely tied to the Mubarak regime who had escaped with his ill-gotten loot to Europe, asking him to get him a Cabinet Ministry position in the new government after the January 25th Revolution, and Maher promising him that he would. Later, he calls the businessman back and boasts that the position is his. Later still, he and the businessman discuss the latter's plan to set up a group of businessmen in Britain to finance Ahmed Maher's group, helping him to set up a political party; Maher tells the man that he'll need money to set up headquarters all over the country, etc. There are several more incriminating tapes being released to the media almost every day, and in addition to their sentences for breaking the demonstrations law, they are expected to soon face charges of espionage and illegally receiving foreign funding for political activities. This has gone a long way to taking the air out of the tires of the US' tactic of unleashing its second-string agents from the April 6 movement and the so-called Revolutionary Socialists, after the Muslim Brotherhood largely failed to win the world's sympathy.
So this is the context in which the latest bombing took place, in Mansoura, a city that has been on the front lines of opposition to the Brotherhood. Unfortunately, we've all been expecting a dramatic escalation in terrorist attacks within the next two weeks, in the lead-up to the referendum on the new constitution (it's officially an amended constitution, but all its clauses have been re-written.) All that is the bad news. There's plenty of good news, however, which this bad news is intended to obscure:
1) The new constitution is amazing, with explicit, binding protections for citizen rights, including all the rights covered by international treaties and conventions to which Egypt is a signatory (which is pretty much all of them). For the first time ever, the government is to be held fully responsible for guaranteeing that the freedom, political and civil rights and dignity of all citizens are protected equally, and torture in all its forms is defined as a crime without a statute of limitations. Discrimination against any person on the basis of gender, religion, color or ethnicity is criminalized, and an independent committee of human rights monitors is to be established with a mandate to receive complaints and prosecute offenses. The police are no longer answerable to the country's president, but to the parliament. The judicial system is also made independent of the executive and legislative branches, and the Prosecutor General is elected by the judges themselves, rather than appointed by the president, as under Morsy (under Mubarak, the judges selected three candidates and the president appointed one of them).
The constitution also includes binding protections for handicapped persons and those with special needs, dramatically increases the percentage of Egypt's annual budget for health and education, and includes binding quotas for the election of Copts, women, handicapped persons and people under the age of 35 to local municipal councils. There are a lot of other great things in the new constitution, but I can't cover them all, since it has 247 clauses. Suffice it to say that it was written by representatives of every sector of society including representatives of women's organizations, human rights organizations, international legal and constitutional experts, labor and farmers' rights activists, the Copts, handicapped people's rights activists, doctors' rights activists, you name it. Even the Salafists were represented, along with the Islamic scholars of Al-Azhar, as well secularists of all stripes. The sessions were long and heated and noisy and contentious, with every group fighting to get everything on its wish list into the constitution -- which is one reason why it's so long. I've never been a fan of Amr Moussa, but I have to admit that his sense of pomp and propriety served us well, because his job was to herd cats, get them to agree to reasonable and acceptable compromises where necessary and lead them to the finish line before the December 3rd legal deadline, which he did admirably well.
2) All the indications suggest that public participation in the referendum will break new records -- not only in spite of, but because of, the violence and threats by the Brotherhood and their allies, which, far from frightening us, are keeping the vast majority of Egyptians unified and even more determined to rebuild their country in the face of all obstacles.
3) Egypt, for the first time in more than 40 years, has been actively seeking new sources for its military procurement, and is in the process of reversing decades of military dependence on the US, which is part of a greater effort to build new and much healthier international relationships (economic, political and military) with a much wider range of nations, including in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
4) Even though our current government is an interim, very temporary one, it includes some hard-working ministers who have begun to actively address a number of long-festering problems like the terrible living conditions in the shanty-towns that have spread like a blight over Egypt's landscape over the past 40 years, to revamp the nation's public transport system, to repair and expand the network of roads and high-ways, to set in place effective controls to fight corruption in the public sector, etc.
5) A lot of projects which had been on hold over the past 3 years have been reactivated, including major housing and manufacturing and infrastructure facilities, and foreign and domestic investors have indicated their confidence in the country's economic potential by financing them. (New foreign investments during Morsy's year in power had dwindled to nothing).
We still face some major challenges, not least of which are the increasingly vicious and destructive terrorist attacks, although our security forces are doing an incredible job capturing weapons smugglers and those who finance and organize them so that the attacks that succeed are a small fraction of those that are attempted. An even bigger challenge is the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming presidential elections, which are planned for next Spring. Most estimates suggest that over 80% of the Egyptians want General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi as their next president. His popularity among the people is truly phenomenal, and people keep putting his photos up everywhere, in their homes and coffee-shops and other places of business, despite the fact that it constitutes a clear provocation to the Brotherhood thugs, who have burned and smashed these places in response. Several people have been murdered for making the two-fingered "victory" sign or the symbol for El-Sisi (forming two "C"s with two fingers from each hand. There is enormous public pressure on him to announce his candidacy, something he seems very reluctant to do, probably because it would entail his retirement from the army, and at the same time encourage those who argue that what happened last summer was a military coup.
On the other hand, most Egyptians are determined to force him to announce his candidacy if necessary, by staging massive rallies to demand it. Partly this is because he is the only person who enjoys the trust and respect of most Egyptians, and thus can easily rally the vast majority of voters. And partly, it is because the Islamist and "former" Brotherhood member Abdel-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh has already announced his candidacy and obtained the endorsement of all the Islamists, who have united behind him, including Brotherhood and others, including the Salafists, and at the same time there are at least a dozen non-Islamists who have already indicated that they intend to run even before the presidential elections are called; this number is expected to rise to 20 or more. The widespread fear is that if the Islamists of all stripes and affiliations represent less than 10 percent of the votes (which they do, far less), they can still win if the other voters are fragmented among dozens of candidates. This becomes an even greater concern if most voters stay home because they are demoralized or don't like any of the candidates (all of whom have largely discredited themselves by proving that when push came to shove, they put their own interests before those of the public, unlike El-Sisi, who not only has demonstrated great leadership and political and management skills, but who risked his career and his life and the wrath of the US and its allies to stand with the people). It's a sure bet that the Islamists won't stay home and that they will go to vote for their candidate. It's a very, very difficult decision for him to make, but he's no stranger to very difficult decisions and I believe he will do the right thing, whatever he decides.
I don't know if anybody will actually read this whole, very long post. I just sat down and wrote a summary of what I would have written if I'd had time to write a lot of shorter ones about things as they happened.
Finally, on a lighter note, there's this song. It was hastily written back in July to thank the army for standing with the people to end the Brotherhood's rule, performed by several B-grade singers and produced with a very low budget. The first time I heard it, I thought it was awful, noisy and unsophisticated. But then, it spread like wildfire, and people were playing it on their car radios, in shops, in their homes. It became a fixture at weddings and other celebrations. It was blasted on balconies wherever the Brotherhood marched. If you want to really drive a Brotherhood member crazy, just let him or her hear this song and watch as they freak out, although you want to be sure they can't get to you because people have been beaten to within an inch of their lives, stabbed or thrown off balconies for this. And still, people keep doing it. The song's name is "Teslam el Ayady", which is a folksy way of saying "thank you". It literally means "may your hands be protected". It's become a code that Egyptians use among themselves, to indicate support for the army and its leader, and rejection of the Brotherhood and everything they stand for. I can personally testify to the fact that it's an acquired taste, and that I've gone from hating it to somewhat liking it. It always makes me smile to hear it, anyway.
"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
Did I mention that events are happening faster than I can report them? As I was posting this, the government (FINALLY!) announced that henceforth the Muslim Brotherhood is categorized as a terrorist organization and any logistical, financial, verbal or written or any other active support for its activities has become a crime subject to legal prosecution in Egypt.
"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
Its always refreshing to hear someone speaking for the people.
That new constitutions sounds clearly awesome, and would represent a serious challenge to the Control system if it was a model whose framework could be duly adopted and adapted around the world.
It is a very good constitution, but it's only one hurdle of many we still face, to have our country the way we believe it can be. Now I'm off to celebrate Christmas: MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!!! May the coming year be filled with joy and love, peace on earth and goodwill to mankind.
"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
AlicetheKurious » Wed Dec 25, 2013 11:14 am wrote:...The song's name is "Teslam el Ayady", which is a folksy way of saying "thank you". It literally means "may your hands be protected". It's become a code that Egyptians use among themselves, to indicate support for the army and its leader, and rejection of the Brotherhood and everything they stand for. I can personally testify to the fact that it's an acquired taste, and that I've gone from hating it to somewhat liking it. It always makes me smile to hear it, anyway.
Alice, Thank You for posting. It's great to hear from you!
The instruments and rhythms, the voices, the faces and gestures and smiles of the singers in the music video made my day! (And, I didn't have to understand the lyrics .)
~ A.
PS. You can surely know why I reddened a phrase of your text: I've always protected my hands.
Art will be the last bastion when all else fades away. ~ Timothy White (b 1952), American rock music journalist _________________
I'm so glad you liked it, Allegro. I would have been overwhelmed trying to translate the lyrics, because the language is so "folksy" (heavy use of metaphors and slang and religious allusions) that a literal translation would have made little or no sense. But somebody else did it pretty well. Here's the link to an English-captioned version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDgyzOTmeiY
It's a song saturated with the intense feelings of joy and relief and deep, deep gratitude we all felt on July 3, 2013, when we heard General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi announce that our nightmare was over. Until that moment, we weren't sure the army would stand on our side, and without the army, we would be at the mercy of the Muslim Brotherhood, tools of the Arabs' worst enemies, and Egypt would become the latest nation to fall after Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Libya and so many others around us. The joy we felt on July 3rd still sustains us today, and whenever somebody starts to feel overwhelmed at the magnitude of the evil we still face, there's always someone to tell them: "Just think about how hopeless we felt, before." That really helps, because no matter how difficult the way before us, when we look back at where we were before July 3, it feels like a miracle.
"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
by IanEye » Sun Oct 27, 2013 4:21 pm 
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