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Tag: Egypt
We struggle every day against our obstacles (November 11 2012) We struggle every day against our obstacles (November 11 2012)

Mohammed Matter ‘Abu Yazan’ the Palestinian political activist, writer and a member of Gaza Youth Breaks out movement, writes “My story is marked by violence, persecution, arrests, abuse and resistance.” Matter has published an article on Aljazeera stating “It has been almost two years now since we wrote our manifesto. We called it a manifesto, but in reality, I’m not sure what it was. Was it a manifesto, or was it a cry for help? Perhaps, an accusation, or even perhaps a demand to the world and to ourselves; a demand for change from the outside and from within. It was before the uprisings began around us, and they have been roaring the last two years in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Bahrain. But we had felt like shouting in the dark, and while this raging had brought light into the darkness of the dictatorships around us, the night around us has not thinned even a bit. No, if anything, it has only become darker. … We struggle every day against our obstacles and for our dreams, and you can see that in all the amazing creativity coming out of Gaza, in our art, poems, writing, videos and songs, you can hear it and meet us in the talks we give all over the world. Yes, we wrote a manifesto, and maybe that was just the bright and loud outcry of the beginning of a journey, whose path is hard and tiring, thorny and also often very quiet and dark. But it is always there. So two years later, we say: We will be free. We will live. We will have peace. And we are always out there, fighting our daily struggle, full of the resistance we inherited from a long struggle for Palestine. We live and write and say and sing silent or loud manifestos every day. Just listen to us.”

 

Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/eUhfO image source Facebook ow.ly/eUhc9

An ethical duty to support the Syrian people (September 22 2012) An ethical duty to support the Syrian people (September 22 2012)

Mohamed Morsi Isa El-Ayyat the 61 year old President of Egypt and a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood. He became Chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party when it was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. In an article published on Aljazeera by Hamid Dabashi titled ‘Morsi in Tehran: Crossing the boundaries’, Dabashi states “When during his speech at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran the Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi declared it an “ethical duty” to support the Syrian people against the “oppressive regime” of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus suddenly, for a clear moment, he became the messenger of the Egyptian Revolution for the Syrian people, and by extension for the rest of the Arab and Muslim world – that Egyptians as a liberated nation stand with them. The utterance, in and of itself, suddenly placed Egypt as the leader of the potentially free and democratic Arab and Muslim world – dismantling the old cliché of the US as the self-designated “leader of the free world”. Morsi spoke with a presiding authority that stems from no religious conviction, but from a moral imperative that only a liberated nation can momentarily invest on their elected officials. …Egypt has emerged as a moral voice from the heart of its revolution and as such it is a force that Morsi’s speech in Tehran made abundantly clear. Beyond anything that any other country or political figure could do, President Morsi’s speech dismantled the entire propaganda machinery of the Islamic Republic, forced its official news agencies deliberately to mistranslate his words, replace the “Syrian government” for where Morsi had said “Syrian people”, and prompted a walkout by the Syrians delegation.”

 

Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/dEq6a image source Press TV ow.ly/dEq1N

Egypt's nouveaux riches and the Palestinians (August 23 2012) Egypt’s nouveaux riches and the Palestinians (August 23 2012)

Joseph Andoni Massad the 49 year old Palestinian American Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘Egypt’s nouveaux riches and the Palestinians’ in which he details how the beneficiaries of the post-Sadat financial success continue to sell out Egypt and the Palestinians. In the article Massad states “The Sadatist and nouveaux riches’ campaigns would invent stories about Palestinians having lost their country because they themselves were “sell-outs” and had “sold their country to the Jews”. These rumours continue to be widespread in Egyptian society, at all levels, till this very day, sustained as they are by the utter chauvinist hatred engendered by this petty uneducated class, who under Mubarak continued to rob the country clean and impoverish vast sectors of its population, in the process accumulating billions of dollars. The anti-Palestinian campaign was central to the Sadatist project of instituting an anti-Arab chauvinist Egyptian nationalism in place of Egyptian Arab nationalism. The charge that Palestinians sold their country is of course a distracting tactic used by an Egyptian comprador class which, in fact, did sell Egypt to the highest bidders (in addition to Americans and Israelis, Saudis have also been favourite buyers) since the 1970s and is fighting the current transformation of the country in order to be able to sell whatever is left of the country unhindered. … Hard as they try to keep the anti-Palestinian rumour mill going, Egypt’s comprador class of sellouts and their liberal press agents will continue to lose ground, as they are now recognised plainly for what they are and what they have been for the last four decades, enemies of the majority of Egyptians.”

 

Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/d0Inb image source Open Library ow.ly/d0IHK

Analysts are asking: Has the revolution failed? (July 11th 2012) Analysts are asking: Has the revolution failed? (July 11th 2012)

Hamid Dabashi the 63 year old Iranian-American Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘The mother of the world: The birth of Egypt’s democracy’ referencing the Egyptian election as not a ‘referendum’ on the revolution, but a step in the only direction possible: forward. Dabashi states “Analysts are asking: Has the revolution failed? …there are other historical comparisons we can make. If you want to have a simple sense of what exactly has happened in the Arab and Muslim world that we celebrate as the “Arab Spring”, just compare the Iranian Revolution of 1979 with the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 – in a span of just a little more than three decades. …The Egyptian revolution is everything that the Iranian revolution was not: calm, composed, gentle, civil, human, hopeful, principled. All the legitimate fear that all Egyptians now have for the future of their revolution is fuel for visionary progress. …Those who fear that Egyptians are not revolutionary enough, or that they are caught in a “Stockholm Syndrome” ought to ask themselves: Do they want Egypt to be thirty years from now where Iran is today – ruled by a fraudulent tyranny, violently opposed by career opportunists in cahoots with the neocons, with the vast majority of Iranians sick and tired of one and disgusted by the other?”

 

Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/c4VTh image source Facebook ow.ly/c4VSm

Fayza Abul- Naga the Egyptian Justice minister is to form a fact finding committee to investigate NGO funding in Egypt. Abul- Naga stated “The committee will be responsible for compiling a detailed report over the amount of aid given to Egyptian civil society and the funding of unlicensed international organisations working in Egypt… The cabinet’s decision to form this committee comes to meet the requests of the Egyptian public who refuse such foreign funding, as it is considered an intervention in our internal affairs… The Egyptian government fully supports any measures which reinforce the role and activities of civil society as long as they comply with the regulations managing that process.” Abul- Naga’s committee will examine how much aid is given to Egyptian civil society organisations by foreign donors, perceived to be a fishing exercise to reveal any “foreign hands” they may be blamed for the street protests, and enable her to politically tap into anti-American sentiment. Abul- Naga’s committee will provide recommendations within three weeks as she jockeys for position in the lead up to the general election only months away.

 

Inspired by David D. Kirkpatrick http://ow.ly/9ePXu image source Thinktanking http://ow.ly/9ePAK

Václav Havel the 75 year old Czech playwright, poet, dissident and former President of the Czech Republic who recently died, has been honored in an article published by Mark LeVine. Levine recalls Havel’s role in the Velvet Revolution and connection to the Arab Spring, “as a model for understanding, or engaging in, the present revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa … While it looks increasingly dark in Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries today, if the protesters in the streets can solidify their co-ordination with civil society and, as was so crucial in Poland, involve religious leaders in fighting truly to take down the system rather than merely get a large piece of it for themselves, there is little doubt that in a very short period of time the world’s newest generation of revolutionaries will manage to secure the freedom for which they are fighting…”

 

Inspired by Mark LeVine http://ow.ly/8eWzq image source Ondřej Sláma http://ow.ly/8eWxy

Adel Al-Gazzar the 56 year old Egyptian formerly held for eight years by the US in the Cuban Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, and imprisoned in Egypt on his return, has Katie Taylor a project officer with Reprieve, calling for Ad-Gazzar’s amnesty. Al-Gazzar had a leg amputated as a result of a US bombing raid in Afghanistan on what he claims was a humanitarian visit to provide aid for the Saudi Red Crescent, he managed to return to Pakistan for treatment until sold to US security agents for a bounty. He was subsequently moved to Guantanamo Bay and been imprisoned for the past decade. Al-Gazzar is currently held by the Egyptians for “attempting to overthrow former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime … widely condemned as an attempt by Mubarak to suppress his Islamist opponents.” Taylor states that “Adel has already suffered far too much in one lifetime. He has been unjustly detained for nearly a decade, and as a result, has suffered permanent injury and chronic health problems and his family now stands on the edge of poverty.”

 

Inspired by Katie Taylor http://ow.ly/7VoPa image source eurasiareview http://ow.ly/7VoVy

Sarah Parcak a US archaeologist and Egyptologist has used satellite imaging analysis to identify from surface surveys thousands of new archaeological sites in Egypt. Having completed her Ph.D at Cambridge University Parcak combined the satellite images with the surface surveys to identify potential water sources in Middle Egypt and also into the East Delta and the arid regions of the Sinai. From this information, Parcak and her team have announced discovering underground building remnants including 3000 settlements around the ancient city of Tanis near San El Hagar, over 1000 tombs and 17 pyramids. With the help of infra-red satellite images taken from 640km distance from the earth, outlines of structures appear visible due to variations in the earth density, enabling Parcak to map a detailed street plan of the ancient city. Inspired by Mike Pitts ow.ly/5aPVv image source University of Alabama ow.ly/5aQ98 Easy to underestimate scale of settlements (July 21 2011)

Sarah Parcak a US archaeologist and Egyptologist has used satellite imaging analysis to identify from surface surveys thousands of new archaeological sites in Egypt. Having completed her Ph.D at Cambridge University Parcak combined the satellite images with the surface surveys to identify potential water sources in Middle Egypt and also into the East Delta and the arid regions of the Sinai. From this information, Parcak and her team have announced discovering underground building remnants including 3000 settlements around the ancient city of Tanis near San El Hagar, over 1000 tombs and 17 pyramids. With the help of infra-red satellite images taken from 640km distance from the earth, outlines of structures appear visible due to variations in the earth density, enabling Parcak to map a detailed street plan of the ancient city.

 

Inspired by Mike Pitts http://ow.ly/5aPVv image source University of Alabama http://ow.ly/5aQ98

Wael Said Abbas Ghonim the 30 year old Egyptian Internet activist and Head of Marketing for Google Middle East Anyone with good intentions is the traitor (February 11 2011)

Wael Said Abbas Ghonim the 30 year old Egyptian Internet activist and Head of Marketing for Google Middle East has received international acclaim for energizing the pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt following his emotional TV interview upon release by Egyptian police who had held him secretly for eleven days. Thousands of Egyptians in response to Ghonim’s interview protested in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to reject the embattled Egyptian regime’s pledges of constitutional reforms. Ghonim is the administrator of a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Said” which is widely credited for inspiring the first January 25 protest. Ghonim is the subject of another Facebook page with 150,000 fans that seeks to authorize him to speak on behalf of the somewhat fractured groups of protestors.

 

Inspired by Hadeel Al-Shalchi ow.ly/3TKAI image source Wikipedia ow.ly/3TKsH

Samir Zaid al-Rifai the 44 year old Prime Minister of Jordan and the son of former Prime Minister Zaid al-Rifai and grandson of Samir al-Rifaihas Talked the talk of reform but little actually happened (February 3 2011)

Samir Zaid al-Rifai the 44 year old Prime Minister of Jordan and the son of former Prime Minister Zaid al-Rifai and grandson of Samir al-Rifaihas been replaced by king Abdullah II with Marouf al-Bakhit following weeks of protests in the country stemming from high food prices and poverty. Rifai oversaw a government subjected to a prolonged recession with record public debt heavily dependent on foreign aid for survival. Opposition forces are calling for constitutional changes to the king’s powers in appointing governments and approving legislation, drawing inspiration from the successes of Tunisia and the mass rallies in Egypt. Rifai was only appointed as Prime Minister in December 2009 but had an extensive history working in the Royal Court.

 

Inspired by Suleiman al-Khalidi ow.ly/3PrAi image source Wikipedia ow.ly/3PrzH

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