Hi all,

Breathlessly,
Jeff

My friends,

I dug into catching up with some neglected favours owed through last night so I might have the utter weariness to sleep through the afternoon as things started up for the day again. I went to bed just as the midday prayers were over. I didn't go to mosque as it seems to me it's a good time for the Egyptians to be sorting things out amongst themselves without foreigners present. One can hear the imam's sermon from this distance due to the mosque's large exterior loudspeakers, and the mosque's announcements to parishioners as the congregation departs. In neither the sermon nor, as I was falling asleep in bed, the parish announcements, did the imam raise his voice or name any of the revolution's flash points or persona. Maybe they wouldn't have minded me being there, after all.

Very hard to sit in front of the TV and watch protester bodies hauled off day after day. But still, the toll now is said to be under 500 and perhaps as low as 300 and I've now been rattling around the house for a couple hours and there don't seem to have been any deaths of protesters or any others through this day so far.

The killers are paid Ministry of Interior employees, actual employees. And their $17 a day temp workers. True sociopaths that they are, they will quit killing when the money for doing so dries up. And they all disappeared even quicker when the Army rolled in a few days ago. It was the Army that stopped the police killings.

Now that the American government has more familiarity with the costs and futility of security-based approaches, and from Iraq to Pakistan their security "partners" have been more or less telling them to bugger off in the last many days, they might take note of the Egyptian uprising's rights-based approach, its economies, its low loss of life, and its possible relevance to Israel-Palestine.

Netanyahu and the others just seem to be pooping their pants. The little shit, anyway (I'm older than he is). I hope the little dag is just writhing. Picture it. A writhing little dag. I hope he has a stroke like Sharon and they both wake up in ten years to see the settlements have all been removed to the Negev.

That's been one side of it that's just as well but for the many deaths we've been counting day to day for what now seems a very long time.

Will Bush and Blair now politely drink hemlock and wander off to their rightful places in the history books?

Probably not nor will certain other people who might well politely do so, too. But their sins, after all, are not so great as those of Boy W. George and were committed in the context of America's conflicted and overpowering "principals" which had been imposed on them.

Totally amazing to me is that Blair is still the "lead man", is it called, for the "quartet", is it called? Who only a few weeks ago said that if there was a two state solution Israel would get to keep the settlements and Palestine "will get, ah.... ...what's left." That is, quite exactly, what I saw Blair say on TV less than a month ago perhaps. A perfect précis of why neither I nor anyone else in this part of the world pays them any mind. They shall not define the future of Palestine. The Palestinians will and El Shabaab ('a' as in 'fat') Masri (The Egyptian Youth) shall find ways... substantial ways, I should imagine... to help them.

We still have much to do... foremost of which is to scream bloody murder that Blair is the "lead man" of the "quartet" who, presumably, awaits the nod of Washington before he does anything. Hopefully, Obama will continue to be as irrelevant to the rights-based approach as he has been in the past and American, security-minded influence will essentially end in the region, the Iraq War now seeming to have driven Iraq into the bosom of Iran.

But there will still be Israel... and Netanyahu's soiled knickers.

This is just great. And it was the Egyptian young people, who I love, who did it on the Tunisian model. Apartheid Israel's settlements may be removed to the Negev before I'm dead and gone after all.

I was approached by a middle-aged, somewhat portly plainclothesman in front of my apartment building yesterday in this City of (Army) Generals (Dobat ["Zobat"], Remaya, Pyramids) and asked to accompany him in his car. We hadn't actually picked the right horse or anything. My wife works just down the street at Remaya Central, the central telephone exchange for Dobat and Hadaba, I think it is called, and we live here so she can walk to work. I really never asked questions about what kind of generals we were living with - sustaining the fiction my wife and I lived with that such things didn't matter. It was an enormous relief, some days into the uprising, to learn that they were Army generals all. I didn't ask directly. I forget how, exactly, I found out.

So the plainsclothesman approached me yesterday and asked where I lived.

I pointed to the building in front of us.

He asked if I had a car.

I pointed to the motorcycle chained to the lamp post behind him.

He asked if I didn't know any better than to be out taking pictures at a time like this.

I said, "I wanted one to show my house at the barriers. They don't all know what the building numbers mean and then I have to call my wife and it all takes a lot of time." He had witnessed me taking a picture, the last in a series that I was taking - pictures of all the rooms in our house (built to the same plan as all the others), the apartment number on the entrance door, etc.

"Could you come with me please," he said, indicating his car and retaining possession of my mobile phone which contained the offending camera.

"Sure," I said.

There was a protocol current for the neighbourhood, as I would soon find out. Anyone, any foreigner anyway, caught taking pictures had to be taken to a certain Army office complex nearby and questioned or something. For all I knew the plainclothesman could be from Interior - into the hands of which 2000 live bodies have disappeared and never been seen or heard of again in recent years. I shuttered through recent days as I saw protesters being hauled off down side streets by the same Interior goons doing the killing, live in front of cameras, on TV, in Liberation (Tahrir) Square. But this was Dobat, it was Army, and no one ever disappears in the hands of the Army. So off I went, 99.9% sure he was Army and thinking we were going to the main barrier at the entrance of one of the two roads into our housing complex. Like there was now an official or semi-official command post there.

But we drove right past that, the barrier still manned by plainclothesmen who mostly looked to be about the age of some of the generals' sons who still live with their parents; just as has been the case for some days; and we drove out onto the road to Upper Egypt which I wasn't happy about at all. But we turned left after a short kilometre or two and were then facing the gate in a long tall wall which entirely hid whatever establishment was behind it, only the pyramids on the Giza Plateau visible above the wall and its gate. The gentleman gave his ID card to a guard, the gate opened and we parked after going 20 or 40 metres into the complex which wasn't very deep and which I knew was not very wide because of the length of the front wall.

I suppose I could have checked to see if there were bars on the windows of the building we were entering but it didn't occur to me at the time and we entered into a large, white marbled foyer that was bright with light from large windows to the rear. We went upstairs and I was delivered into the spacious, tidy office of a man of rank... probably a general... who was maybe 40 years old.

It is worth adding that the civil service, as we know it in the so-called "West", is supervised to a large extent by Army generals in Egypt who rotate through Immigration, Health perhaps, maybe even Telecom, and other entities and ministries during their career and are often sort of MBA types. Their "troops" are the civil service people at those particular assignments. They don't have a big reputation for taking bribes like the police and Interior in general.

I didn't know immediately the gentleman's agenda; his name, I eventually found out when I asked, turned out to be Sharif; but my agenda was to confirm, as soon as there was an opening, my expectation that he was probably Army.

After looking over my bona fides and happily finding out that I had been in Pyramids about three years and not just three days or something; he explained that the plainclothesman had to bring me in because of the use of the camera and he, personally, had to confiscate the phone's tiny memory cards... which had recently cost me $12 for the two. (The memory cards, not the SIM card that makes the phone operational and contains backup memory of the phone numbers one has saved).

I asked if we could just delete the offending photograph but he said, no, the procedure presently in force was that he had to take the memory cards, both of them, even though the one was so new it had nothing on it.

There had been other preliminaries where he quickly relaxed when I started rattling away in my Arabic baby talk if a point wasn't getting through quickly in English, and then when I spoke only Arabic when I called Reda, and explained my circumstances to her, when he relaxed more again during his talk with her on the phone, when he relaxed even more and felt a bit chuffed when he saw me relax after asking, as innocently as possible, whether he was Army or police and was told he was Army.

I mention him relaxing in the sense of getting less and less formal. He continued to move through the topics to be covered rather crisply.

I don't recall if he was wearing a uniform... I think I remember a blue and white shirt patterned shirt so perhaps it was civilian clothes. And I guess a uniform would have established whether he was Army or Interior and I had had to ask for lack of one. No. He wore no uniform. He was very quick and bright and businesslike and engaging as a human being and we were making more eye contact than kind of looking each other over. Finally he gave me back my very nicely produced computer scanned and colour printed copies of Reda's passport and mine along with my drivers license and said, "Would you like a cup of tea? You have to have a cup of tea."

We conversed about something I don't quite recall while awaiting my cup of tea and through the time I drank it. My copy editing work, perhaps. I was getting anxious to be out the door as I just use my Australian passport these past many years, my American dual-nationality hadn't come up and I wanted to get away before it did. I remember he gave me a cigarette to go with the tea when it arrived and we exchanged phone numbers. When I stood up to leave I slapped my pants pockets and checked my wallet and then had to ask, "Would you have a pound and a half for the bus? I just left the house to get some exercise for my legs and feet. I didn't put any money in my pockets before I left." He gave me everything in his right pocket, four pounds and a half, I think, but then the plainclothesman had arrived again and drove me back to my apartment building's front door where he had first found me. As when we had driven to the Army compound, we didn't converse.

I haven't been out of the house again and have little to do, as the telling of the story of General Sharif may suggest.

But it is a story worth telling.

When the protesters and general citizenry are asked to consider having these kind of men administering the nation for some interim period or something, they largely do so under current circumstances and the ranks of generals are filled by men (and women?) such as Mr. Sharif. They're often just plainly gamil (gorgeous). They're like the finest administrators amongst Western civil servants who leave their politics at home when they go off to work. And Arabs do consider themselves Western, by the way. So the Yank congress, Blair and others who think they are in a cultural or religious conflict are simply encountering resistance from cultures that are more similar than they imagine because they, the Yank congress and Blair, are not presenting a rights-based  conflict resolution model for Israel-Palestine..

Look at www.americansincairo.org - I think I have four years of "semi-official" opinion as to what Mubarak and others believe is wrong with what America and Blair have tried to do in the neighbourhood, why it will fail, how long it will take to fail, etc., ad nauseum. And for 30 years Mubarak had to suppress popular opinion emanating from aspirations grounded in rights, as they watched Israeli Apartheid grow and grow and grow and become the disgusting monster that it is today - defended at all costs by the American government and its security-based models. Filthy contraptions that they are.

I'll bet Netanyahu is just wearing nappies these days. It's wonderful to see him squirm.

Thank you for your time,
Jeff

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05 February 2011 - Sat - 21:33 From Cairo: first things first

My friends,

Another day without fatalities amongst the protesters - Hamdullah. Al Jazeera English is still operating out of its Cairo office and from the street but the Al Jazeera Arabic office was closed down today and some of their staff arrested. I think the arrests and closing may have been done by Interior - wouldn't be the Army - and other reports indicate that uniformed (?) police are coming back onto the streets after being absent since the day of the highest fatalities - ? the 27th or 28th ? or maybe it was the 29th. Kind of a blur as we were up and down, sleeping in small bits at different times of the day depending on when things were happening or still receiving useful comment and analysis - useful new interviews 24 hours a day because there is really no time of day or night, our time, that there isn't someone new to interview many time zones to the east, west or both. Then last night there had been no fatalities during the day or evening so I finally had a good long sleep from 2 or 3 am.

Reports from the English channels (Al Jazeera and PressTV) towards early evening, a few hours ago, included interviews with people elevated to positions at or near the top within the regime over the last many days. One of them was explaining, at some length and in some detail in the longest such interview that I caught, that there is a constitutional way, under State of Emergency procedures, for Mubarak to sign off from his responsibilities as president, kind of one by one and in a certain order; and promulgate, by decree, some of the things demanded by the protesters (which would free time up for the new parliament because they would already be law, etc.). He seemed sincere. We shall see what we shall see. It would mean others could call the end result a revolution but it would, constitutionally, at the front end, be acts of members of the current government who accomplish these noble deeds.

It really might take them a couple weeks to go through the stages he was talking about and the protesters might really just stay in Tahrir Square while they do.

The phone company service centres, "centrals," are opening up again tomorrow so Reda will be going back to work after being off the whole of last week.

I just work at home and could have worked through the last 10 days when we all started taking notice - but I've been the zomboid and just glued to the TV and Internet news portals. If there are still people being killed, I want to watch out of respect for them. This evening I finally picked up the copy editing where had I left off... a large, continuing project I can work on as much as I want.

PressTV (Iran) - which is gleeful about all this - has been airing a lovely parade of full screen still photos showing all this as following the same script as the departure of the Shah:

1. the mass protests

• a picture of the Iranian masses 30 years ago
• a picture of the Egyptian masses this and last week
• another picture of the Iranian masses 30 years ago
• another picture of the Egyptian masses this week and last
• etc
• etc

2. picture of the Shah signing documents followed by picture of Mubarak signing documents
3. the swearing in of a "new" cabinet by the Shah followed by the swearing in of a "new" cabinet by Mubarak
4. pictures of more mass protests

• a picture of the Iranian masses 30 years ago
• a picture of the Egyptian masses this and last week
• another picture of the Iranian masses 30 years ago
• another picture of the Egyptian masses this week and last
• etc
• etc

5. more of the same... with different versions of Items 2 and 3
6. Item 4 again.
7. a picture of the Shah getting on a plane and leaving Iran.

It's really an effective visual experience. All unfolding identically, so far. And of impeccable video and audio presentation. They were obviously glad to take some time with it before airing it for the first time. Maybe they had most of it waiting in the wings beforehand. 

Best,
Jeff

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07 February 2011 - Mon - 02:19 From Cairo: getting back to work

My friends,

Egypt went back to work today. At least the day shift and only in fits and starts.

Which is just as well because for tens of millions of Egyptians, a day the parents don't work is a day the family doesn't eat.

Thanks to those Australians for Justice and Peace in Palestine people who have written in recent days. It brings back a lot of wonderful memories. Here I live in a whole nation that thinks like us at AJPP (but can't do anything about it because of the American government).

Today Reda, went back to work, walking there as usual. It's only right around Tahrir Square, and a few, I will admit, very, very poor and transient neighbourhoods, that an Egyptian has to think much about what's going on about them at the present time.

After work, Reda took the bus to her sister Zuba's where I picked her up in time to get us home before the 7pm curfew.

The banks were to open today. Maybe they did. I didn't get to ours until about 2pm, perhaps, and Reda now tells me they were all open but only until 1pm. But she didn't physically go into town and see one open - so maybe not. The ATMs were out of money or something by the time I got to mine and I didn't even see queues at the others I passed... nothing left there either, perhaps.

LOTS of Egyptians have the idea that Israel caused all this or America caused it. Cairo is an entirely different experience for me, through the TV, than it was only two weeks ago but that is not so true of Pyramids where I am known to certain people in certain places. I ride a motorcycle so I just put on my helmet and no one even knows that I'm a Europoid on my way to the places I know people and am welcome. People at the bank who were queued up for the ATM kind of wondered what I was doing there but I eventually found a small excuse to speak Egyptian to one or two briefly and everybody soon forgot that I was there.

There were no petrol stations with petrol on the main roads I took to town, El Fayoum, Remaya Roundabout and Pyramids and Faisal streets, but I slipped into my old neighbourhood's minor thoroughfare down from Pyramids and El Arish streets (Tersa and Ezzadin Omar) and the first station was furiously pumping petrol but had no queue to speak of.

Then I stopped to see Tarek, my composer friend at the recording studio. He was there and so was a violinist who I know well. We were so happy to see each other after 10 days that we didn't talk politics at all. Which we had never done before anyway. Egyptians just didn't in the past and I'm hearing more stories like mine - the subject of politics never came up amongst Egyptians in the past because there was nothing one could do about it anyway. And many are finding spouses often have different, even profoundly different notions of the past and present like Reda and myself.

After 7 or 8 days of being house-bound, I some days ago ended the fight for the TV remote by retreating to the Internet once the daily deaths were over. I think I mentioned previously that a good place to start is:

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en

They started the flurry of independent press by setting a standard in print from 2004 that talked about things in a way that didn't result in arrests and shutdowns. Others followed suit, a real flurry. There now seem to be 20 or more different newspapers to choose from. I've not heard of any Egyptian newspaper closures and I think Iran's PressTV (English) would be glad to have reported on it if such had happened at all.

Reda and her sister Zuba keep their eyes glued to the official channels which is how I found them at about 6pm. Zuba fed me and then Reda and I went straight home where I had a 2 hour copy editing job waiting for me from Saudi Arabia. Reda jumped straight to the remote and began watching TV. I was in America 11 September 2001 and we were the same. I forget how long it was before the TV schedule got back to normal.

Between Tarek and Zuba's I had stopped at Ashraf the carpenter's shop because Reda's cousin cum brother, who introduced us two years ago, had called and said he was over there.

Assim owns a 22 room "Egyptian" hotel that's normally full at this time of the year. He's ruined, essentially, for the year at least, because of the current situation. There might be something for him after the summer, Egypt having few visitors other than Gulf and Saudi Arabs during the summer. But he had just a year ago, after 6 years of being back in business, expanded to the 6th floor from the 7th in his quiet Talaat Harb Square side street building. He had, in the late 1990s, put together enough money to open a backpacker camp in Dahab on the Gulf of Aqaba. Then certain terrorist attacks wrecked the visitor industry for long enough to make him have to sell the place he put together... for next to nothing, I suppose.

Now, in spite of the US/EU recession, he has built up such a good name that he had few empty rooms when the head-on competition was often languishing a bit. Things were going so well that he finally got the car his wife wanted for so long... him, too, of course... but a steady keel for the hotel came first. A new car, in fact. Now he's got three years of payments on the car which people like him in the visitor industry may just have to give back  to the bank, one would guess. He's at:

http://www.sarainnhostel.com/   --- the man in the middle of the two guests.

So his sympathies do not, for the moment, lie with the people who still occupy Tahrir Square.

He doesn't have the visceral dislike and fear of the police thugs that I do. Those who were on the world stage a week ago when they killed so many people. I've known of them for most of 6 years as I first stayed right on Tahrir Square when looking for a little flat to buy in 2005 and then saw them again and again since late 2005 when I first met Assim and since coming back in 2008 because the attempted demonstrations from 2005 to just before the 25 January revolution seem always to have begun at Talaat Harb Square closer to Assim's hotel. I've not seen many protests. Not five, I suppose. But they all followed the same script...

The one attempted march whose organisers I later saw mentioned by name in an English language newspaper was a tiny little group who wanted to march from Talaat Harb Square two long blocks to Tahrir Square and hope the masses would join them, I suppose. But they were kind of like the Socialist Workers Party in Australia... too small in number and too obscure in terms of the dozens of issues for which they had fine-tuned positions for the average person on the street take any notice of them. I knew that the police "thugs" - coarse looking people all - were normally successful in dispersing them, chasing them back into the neighbourhoods to the east and northeast of Talaat Harb Square before they got to Tahrir Square itself. Of course Assim and other visitor industry people were relieved, whatever their sympathies for the occasional issue they could identify with. The "masses" never joined them anyway, in terms of what I saw from 7th and 9th floors of hotels or otherwise knew.

And shutting down Tahrir Square, I used to calculate as I waited for red lights there and on the thoroughfares that led into it, would soon have hundreds of thousands of cars in gridlock, costing, how much would one guess, per hour of a person making enough to own a car... not to mention the tens or hundreds of thousands of people stuck on buses and taxis... the numbers would drift through my mind. Millions of dollars an hour in lost productivity, perhaps.

I've been writing in recent days as if the police thugs were day labourers along with their ~10% Interior Ministry plainclothes supervisors but now I am not so sure.

I asked Assim early this evening what they were called.

"What?" he asked.

"The men with the blackjacks brought in to make crowds go away," I said.

"You mean the police?"

"Not the police. The men who come and beat the people trying to shut down Tahrir."

"Oh, the police who have never been to school... don't know how to read... don't know how to write... ?"

"Yes."

"Amnimarakazi," he said evenly and turned to other subjects (amni-mara-kazi [first syllable stress on each of those sub-parts]).

So perhaps they are full-time employees although various news agencies talked about "$17 a day" thugs at various times as well.

We all had our tea with Ashraf and departed to run errands before the 7pm curfew. Reda and I were waived through the barrier to Dobat. It was dark but we looked harmless, I suppose.

The men at Ashraf's were all sullenly relieved that some aspects of their lives would now begin to return to normal. Everybody is. But the young people still hold Tahrir and the pictures of it on TV when we got home tonight seem to show larger tents and impromptu structures that weren't there before today. There remain barricades the protesters made out of burnt vehicles and any big pieces of steel they could tear loose from fences and lamp posts and so on in the final days before the Army moved in and prevented the police from entering the area and killing people.

The traffic police were back to normal daytime duties. They had disappeared from the street altogether after the many police murders of about 27, 28 and 29 January. All the police disappeared once the Army rolled into downtown and the neighbourhoods. Other kinds of police will be welcomed back in neighbourhoods along Faisal and Pyramids streets. The uniformed and plainclothesmen aren't just government spies. Many of them are what best practice recommends in terms of actually introducing themselves to new residents, getting a sense of developing feuds and friction between families or individuals, leading mediation on the street, etc. blending in to roles of respected elders from the churches and mosques. There are plenty of both them if there is trouble. In my own neighbourhood off Tersa Street the only neighbourhood trouble that I ever saw was between two teenage boys and their respective friends. I saw the one boy on the street below me one night apparently off to do battle alone, his sisters (I would guess) with their hands clasped about his wrists, trying to make him turn back and come home, had finally brought him to a halt just below my lounge room window from which I watched the young ladies beg him to turn back... which he eventually did. There was a police car parked in the neighbourhood with four uniformed officers the next morning and 24 hours a day for the next week. And that was the end of that. "Officer presence."

There was a wedding party inching along with the slow Faisal Street traffic as the sun was starting to get low. The wedding's sound system had been set up on a ute (pickup truck) to blast out with the standard wedding songs and the cars in that train were beeping out the standard wedding horn honking. A sight not seen for some time, perhaps, and people stopped to watch and smile.

As one might expect, I heard no laughter on the street. The nation and its people are heading into uncharted waters and in our Pyramids neighbourhoods are either solemn or angry.

Egypt is in no position to see the economy come to a standstill or even slow down. The visitor industry... just 6% of GDP, I think... is wrecked until September at least. And people will be holding tight to their savings in present circumstances slowing growth in consumer industries - whitegoods and new car sales first one would expect. The days the economy was paralysed amounted to a loss of two or three percent of GDP so far, I would estimate based on other kinds of reports I have seen or heard.

The economy is well diversified but has been industrialising and entreprenuerising at a higher rate of late. The approximately 38,000 visitors arriving to Egypt every day before the revolution accounted for only 6% of GDP (and only 20% of foreign currency earnings) so it gives some notion of the scope and vibrance of the economy as a whole. Jobs had been opening up robustly for migrants to Cairo, Alexandria, the Red Sea and less conspicuous destinations from Upper Egypt and the Delta. Those Nile and Delta sources of migration have no further water from the Nile to be opening up more farming for the very large number of young people born fifteen and twenty-five years ago. Without economic growth, the numbers of unemployed will swell quickly: illiterate youth, youth who are high school graduates, and, the young, higher educated unemployed as well.

And the ranks of unemployed youth will swell even more than they have if the current politico-economic cronyism doesn't morph into more freedom and diversity for Egyptian entreprenuers and international investors of various sorts. For the moment they, and Egyptians from average circumstances most of all, can be constrained by lack of personal contacts with the elites who can navigate business licenses etc. from an unresponsive bureaucracy - or rather one that in some instances only responds to "courtesy" of applicants. Or just doesn't have to do its job and often doesn't do its job.

Rwanda has a better business license and foreign investment legislative and administrative infrastructure.

The half or so of Egypt's population who couldn't really eat properly or at all without daily income couldn't see things go on as they had but now there is a bit of everybody getting their own way. The regime will not simply disband, on the one hand, like it slowly did in Tunisia, but the protests will be allowed to go on, on the other.

I think I saw Hillary Clinton calling for Mabarak to leave soon or right away or something. But America is no place to be looking for leadership in the current situation as its government is largely responsible for the conflicted contraptions that Egypt has had to endure in its Israel policy which has so poisoned Egypt's relations with other Muslim nations, at least. For this and related reasons, there isn't much of an ear turned towards American government ideas at the present time, especially in the context of lingering notions that Israel or America started the uprising somehow.

But affection for America is not lacking. It is the beloved American Univerity in Cairo that filled so many upper-class student's heads with expectations of a rights-based government and foreign policy. Following on those heels, Cairo University and the other Egyptian universities were then, perhaps, freer to espouse similar principles. They all would have long ago if the government hadn't been forced into suppressing the moral indignation developing out of what the American government was allowing and funding Israel to do in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

If the government of America wants to "help" in the current situation it must first do so by censoring IsraeliApartheid in the UN and initiating a process by which Palestine is given back to the Palestinians (for Israel to return to its borders as before the 1967 war). To do this they will have to enter directly into negotiations with Hamas who remain the elected parliamentary majority in Gaza and the West Bank. Before the Hamas victory, the Palestinian Authority had become as lazy and comfortable and corrupt as Egypt's ruling party as it lived through decade after decade of American-imposed conflicted principles and stalemate with Israel. But it wasn't stalemate for Israel. It's government doubled then quadrupled their West Bank settlements' population since 11 September 2001 - the most basic cause of the attacks on America that day. There are now 500,000 or more "settlers" - squatters - usurpers whose household need to be removed to the Negev and other places

As I said a day or two ago, now that the Congress of the United States of America has had more experience with the cost and utter futility of a "security" based approach, maybe it will become more curious about a "rights" based approach. Since they presently lack such an approach, no one in Egypt is going to be looking to America for "help". They don't need it, they don't want it, they won't accept it and the Yank populace will go on, and on, and on... wondering what went wrong.

Thank you for your time,
Jeff

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07 February 2011 20:59 - Mon - From Cairo - an interesting government video

My friends,

A quiet day in Cairo's southwesternmost suburbs and all the others so far as I know. Protesters are sustaining large numbers in their little piece of "Liberated Egypt" (Tahrir Square).

Day and evening road traffic ratcheted up a notch or two through our neighbourhoods but not to the level of what it was before the revolt began.

Since yesterday, at least, the very large Army trucks with flatbed trailers have appeared and have started hauling an initial few tanks and armoured personnel carriers away from Pyramids' major arteries.

Some construction projects have been in full swing since yesterday at least - the labourers working the small, on site, concrete mixers furiously and noisily - 12 story apartment buildings on small lots in the neighbourhoods at least. The canals, too. Two of the last open air canal segments in the southwest of the Pyramids area floodplain are being dredged and concrete structures built into them that will have concrete roofs upon which sand, soil, and outdoor cafes and park-like areas will then exist - the canal flowing underground in the concrete structures as those of most of Monsureya Street, Tersa Street and others now do. Something about the hydraulics of the Nile as it runs through town and its canals through the floodplain don't seem to allow just filling such canals in. All the water, after all, is going to irrigate the farms of the Delta and Alexandria in which 40+ million of Egypt's 80+ million people live. So I'm guessing that there might be so much water in the canals still open or now covered that it would raise the level of the Nile where it flows through the centre of Greater Cairo if they were closed off..

If I will come to retain only a single memory of today it will probably be that of a TV channel my wife and her sister were watching. It will be that memory because of the visuals in a particular video collage of still shots that went on for many, many minutes: images of progress and prosperity - tons of pictures of factories and other elements of the economy and then tons of pictures of Egyptian family life - middle and upper class at least - everything from the dinner table to the beach - Egyptian flags all over the place blended with the pieces of the collage floating across the screen that kept changing with a sweet, melancholic male voice singing for the audio component of the video with full orchestration and a plaintive, comforting audio effect overall.

I was thinking it was a rally-round-the-past presentation but then the video's images shifted to Tahrir Square and well washed, dressed and rested protesters of all sizes, shapes, genders and ages, usually with lots of Egyptian flags in their hands, and it went on for a long time with appealing images of diverse, ardent demonstrators.

So it was put together to create a feeling that the protests are or will come to be embraced as a cherished piece of Egyptian life and history, too.

I was the only one watching at the time and I asked Reda, now that we are home, what channel it was and who owned it. She said the channel was El Masriya and it was indeed government owned and the piece broadcast during their news presentation El Saniya - the name in the upper right of the screen that I jotted down at the time.

For what it's worth,
Jeff

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08 February 2011 00:26 - Tues - Egyptian gov't television valourising revolt in general

Further to what I wrote some hours ago, Egyptian government television in general, on its many channels, now seems to be valourising the uprising and I will get back to the breadfruit revolution (www.jeffmarck.net/breadfruitrevolution.htm).

I'm not really watching the TV much anymore and Al Jazeera and PressTV are going back to more and more of their regular programming.

I do check the TV once or twice a day to see how big the Tahrir Square crowds are and they remain substantial.

So, once again -

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en - AlMasri AlYoum "The Egyptian Day"

- has worked hard to be worthy of our trust in their reporting of days like these and I hope you have a look every day or two.

The American government and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee need informed criticism and censor - to your Senators and Members of Congress and Obama if you're a Yank... otherwise you always have the option of sending hate mail to your nearest American embassy... whatever.

Good night and good luck,
Jeff

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08 February 2011 21:16 - Tues - Pursuing the Tunisian model - Egypt's largest protester numbers yet

My friends:

I thought I would be done with missives until Friday which is to be the big protest day in coming weeks (and months?).

But the Tahrir crowds massed larger than ever today, some also surrounding the Ministry of the Interior and others the Parliament building. Old people, young people, children - people from every walk of life.

What is more perhaps more significant to the average northeast-side Greater Cairo resident is less reported on Al Jazeera English and PressTV: this involves the occupation now, or at least inconveniencing of road traffic, at Ramses Square which, even more than Tahrir Square, is perhaps the busiest intersection downtown and is 4 or 5 kilometres to Tahrir's northnortheast. And those rues lead out of downtown into the affluent suburbs of Heliopolis, New Cairo, etc. So more hundreds of thousands of cars and other road traffic are having to take seriously circuitous routes to their destinations.

Things now seem to be following even more closely the Tunisian pattern - the first demand of the Tunisian uprising was for the president to leave and now the Egyptian uprising is following suit - when that possibility was initially dismissed by the presidents, the result in both cases has been a considerable increase in the number of protesters. I guess the Google executive Wael Ghonim, who heads Google's Middle East and North Africa marketing divisions, visited Tahrir after his release Monday after nearly two weeks in custody, during which he was blindfolded (the whole time?) and interrogated. So that has also been mentioned as an impetus for more people to flow into Tahrir and stay longer when they do. More and more notables in Egypt's cultural and business world are stopping by as well. It was Ghonim at the centre of the Facebook group that was one of the critical elements that brought together the initial days of protest and their continuing success.

The sage notions of Condoleeza Rice that the war in Iraq would result in a "blossoming of democracy in the Middle East" - by way of the security approach - is no longer just dead, it is being buried altogether by the Tunisian and now Egyptian rights-based approaches. Egyptian friends say it is spreading in Yemen and Jordan, at least, more than what English news sources available in Egypt are mentioning. I think they were saying specifically that the Yemeni president is simply going to resign and leave a transitional group to write up a new constitution, etc. I shall forever be quick to point out that the main result of the American government's security hysteria and Iraq War has been to drive Iraq into the bosom of Iran. Osama Bin Laden couldn't have dreamed of a better result.

Whenever an Egyptian pauses for a second, after mentioning Bush, and begins to specify which one, I chirp in with "Boy George?", which amuses even those too young to remember the gay British popstar by that name who was endlessly difficult to take seriously as an adult, a goal he somehow seemed to long for in the absence of any supporting evidence whatsoever that he would one day enjoy enjoy adult status socially. Kindly spread the moniker.

So I've now had a couple days where I got away from the TV and put through some calls to AusAID Ghana and the Ghana NGO that may have the first Samoan breadfruit project in Africa.

Good night and good luck,
Jeff

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09 February 2011 07:39 - Weds - On goes "The 25 January Revolution": Gems from AlMasry AlYoum

A really scary story of a man inadvertently "arrested" in the first couple days of the revolution:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/content/arrested-al-masry-al-youm%E2%80%99s-day-anger-reporters%E2%80%99-diary-0

The youth of Tahrir issue a statement:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/opinion/message-tahrir-square

A biography of one of the young people murdered by the Ministry of the Interior:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/fallen-faces-uprising-sally-zahran

Netanyahu peeing in his pants for the day:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/egypt-can-crush-uprising-iran-says-netanyahu

Interior's fate in the provinces ("governates"):
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/protesters-attack-police-stations-several-egyptian-provinces

glory, Glory, GLORY - Tahrir Square 8 Feb 2011:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/day-15-tahrir-uprising-newcomers-swell-protesters-ranks


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11 February 2011 13:06 - Fri - Inspiring - short - NYT report about the uprising's leadership

The first clear, concise report on how the revolution started that I have seen:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/world/middleeast/10youth.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=world&src=me


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12 February 2011 15:34 - Sat - Cairo - 3pm 12 February 2011: whew

Hi All,

So Mubark's ignominious departure to Sharm El Sheikh yesterday(?) and his resignation yesterday evening are now history.

For me it happened when I was in the lounge room of "my" family when "Vice-President" (for ~10 days) Suleiman announced Mubarak's resignation. The home of my "brother" Magdy Ibrahim Selim. I had gone over there to pick up a fat little payment for my flat in that building. His ~30 year old daughter is buying it with her husband, their two little daughters home with grandma these days as Hoda has returned to the working world after the early years of motherhood. Her husband and youngest brother were at Tahrir when the news of Mubarak's abdication came in the midsts of the sunset prayers. Boy Wonder (Ahmad - Magdy's son who house-sat my little flat from when he got married in late 2006 or early 2007 - when I was back in Canberra 2006-2008 - and continues his climb in the ranks of the Semiramis-Intercontinental Hotel reservations department) had come in from the adjoining flat with his wife and two little kids. The room just exploded in joy when Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned and left the country in the hands of the military who will now organise elections and have other transitional duties. That neighbourhood street was, however, quiet immediately afterwards. People are apprehensive about what all this means and the "forge onward" enthusiasts seemed mianly to be downtown demonstrating and will now probably stay all night again and continue their celebrations.

Last night at our home, Reda wandered as in a trance to the TV as they ran footage of the helicopter that carried Mubarak from the presidential palace to the Cairo airport... yesterday(?) or the day before, that would have been. Reda touched her fingers to the image of the helicopter, following it right to left across the TV screen as the camera panned to keep sight of it until it disappeared, having grown smaller and smaller by then, behind the tops of distant tall buildings. Then she turned and sat down on the lounge and just cried buckets... the designated successor of Sadat who was murdered for making peace with Israel... who was the designated successor of Gamal Adbul Nasser who implemented girls and womens education initiatives and came to her school when she was a little girl and shook their hands... they all gave her quite a lot (as she has had her career with the government's Telecom with it's full medical coverage, generous retirement benefits to look ahead to, etc.).

It's too bad that the resignation of Mubarak occurred after full daylight. The video streaming out of Tahrir during daytime was giving such a lovely picture of well-scrubbed, colourfully dressed, attractive Egyptians of all walks of life who have joined the "Shabaab" ("a" as in "fat"), The Youth... a word I had never noticed before which has been, more and more, respectfully on the tips of tongues for days and days and days. It would have been nice to have seen them explode in joy in full sunlight. Collages of still photos we have been seeing on TV, taken in the darkness of the moments after Mubarak's sunset resignation was announced, make them all look gaunt and exhausted, which of course those who have been there 15 days probably would have looked like in sunlight, too.


It was the ~35 year old Google executive, Wael Ghonim, who got all this going with 14 other people through an anonymous Facebook group:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/world/middleeast/10youth.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=world&src=me

Known or unkown to him were the preparations of parallel and more established youth resistence movements, the 6th of April Youth who had been planning and executing operations since 2008 and others, perhaps even some of those I watched from hotel rooftops 2005-2006 and 2008-2010, not knowing who, exactly, they were:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20030485-503543.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_6_Youth_Movement

In any event, the two eventual major players laid out a successful pattern of action once people in droves came to Tahrir looking for leadership. And both refused to be called "leadership" - they both seem to have trusted that once getting days and days of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of protesters out, things would take their natural course if their primary demand was the exit of Mubarak.

So we toasted the revolution with tea at "home" and then I left the Selims to go find Reda who had been at the market through the afternoon and had taken everything by toktok taxi to her sister, Zuba's.

I took our 22 year old nephew to Ashraf's carpenter's shop to kind of celebrate the occassion but everybody over there was stunned to the point of speechlessness. After a cup of tea we went back to Zuba's to see what Reda wanted to do and she wanted to get home. We loaded the backpack and motorcycle with the groceries and putt-putted home. The traffic police had disappeared again... the police won't be disbanded, perhaps, but they are so detested as to be fearful for their lives, one would think, in the last couple weeks. One of them shot and killed somebody up around the Suez Canal's Med entrance yesterday and the whole town came out and laid siege to the police station until the policeman who had killed the citizen was, himself, dead somehow. Then the townspeople burned down the police station, leaving the other policemen to scatter in all directions as they might... the only score settling story I know of when one might expect millions... but Egyptians really just don't overreact violently as a culture... albeit that generalisation diffuses into traditional systems of retribution and reconciliation in rural and small town areas that are still solidly or even just somewhat "tribal". And government relations with the often somewhat rural populations up towards Gaza and Israel, where the policeman killed and was himself killed yesterday, are exacerbated by those citizens' desire to help Palestine. Some Egyptian residences and businesses are adjacent to Gaza and they do help with the smuggling tunnels, give hospitality to Palestinians waiting for the Rafah crossing to open... whatever they can do. And the general "theatre" of Cairo doing what Israel wants in the joyless reality enforced by America, the American infatuation with Israel's "experitise" on "security" issues, the impossibility of achieving security without rights for all, etc. ad nauseum. Big, ambiguous, can of worms up there, to be sure.

Mubarak held on long enough, or perhaps one could say America and Israel held on to him well long enough, for 30 years of educational espousement of cosmopolitan democratic ideals to be firmly ingrained in the Shabaab who really do know what to do with democracy when given the chance. And instant messaging will now bring them and others downtown by the millions if the Army drags its feet.

So this is the end of Halliburton and the American government's "security" operations in the Middle East. Slowly, their "rights" based approach at the fore, the Shabaab of the region and others will lead an effort to throw back American militarism (but not America itself), contain Israel, and dismantle Israel's vile settlement project on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. I imagine Europe and others will help a great deal if the American government doesn't insist on getting in the way.

The Shabaab and the others are still downtown dancing for the joy of the day they were born - their Day in the Sun.

In all the world the Cry of the Village is the same: "Do you see the Beauty of my people? Do you know the Wonder of my land? Can you imagine the Dreams in my heart for my children? Come sit with me and let us speak! Let us speak of what we might do together, before that time our Creator, calls us to ask what we have done... with our Day in the Sun."

     The Mystic of Kilimanjaro

From our 5000 year old village,
Death count "0"
Jeff
Pyramids, Egypt
"Mabruk Misr" - they're saying it to each other - "Congratulations Egypt"

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14 February 2011 02:25 - Mon - Mubarak's final hours - the "semi"-official story

So, state media are now singing tunes like:
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/5494/Egypt/Politics-/AP-Mubaraks-final-hours-witnessed-desperate-bids-t.aspx

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19 February 2011 04:01 - Sunset on Obama's day in the sun

Reports are that the Army is aiming for elections in six months but that Shabaab representatives are talking to them now and asking for nine.

I went downtown for about five hours yesterday. It was the first time I had been down there since doing some wi-fi work at Assim's hotel on the same day that Mubarak's regime shut down the Internet in the evening.

A few moments ago I finished sending the following comment to a raft of American, Australian, Egyptian and Israeli newspapers:

To the Editor:

In reference to "U.S. Blocks Security Council Censure of Israeli Settlements", NYT Friday 18 February, I am reminded of Ecclesiastes 1:9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.

On the other hand, I was wandering the environs of Liberation Square in Cairo on that day, and - as a foreigner - politely staying at least 500 yards away. But even well far from the epicenter of the celebrations, I was rubbing shoulders with the hundreds of thousands or perhaps some million or two Egyptians in the environs. There were parents with small children too young to remember, later in life, that they were there that day, the parents' cameras capturing the evidence for them that they were.

Then I came home to Pyramids suburb where, after a long winter's nap, I woke up to the news of Obama's veto of the UN Security Council settlements resolution.

The senses have had a certain acuity during the dangers and exhilaration of the Egyptian Revolution and on the heels of that I suppose I shall never forget the contrast, today, in what the Egyptians have done with their Day in the Sun and what Obama has done with his.

Downtown I was uplifted. With word of the settlements veto I was revolted.

As I was when I left America for good in 2004, I am still of the opinion that the greatest threat to American decency and security is Israel and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The contrast between what America was doing with my tax money and what the new government of Egypt will be doing with it brings a certain sense of solace.

Thank you for your time,
Jeffrey C. Marck

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18 March 2011 12:00 - Fri - This week in Egypt

Talk of Hamas and PLO rapprochement was vague but consistent through the week... and Netanyahu's trying to turn the spotlight towards the Iranian nuclear program, as usual. I don't think the new Egyptian government is going to have much to do with the PLO and will be opening up the Gaza crossing and dealing directly with the elected government of Palestine - Hamas.

So Netanyahu looks like a smaller and smaller writhing dag for the moment, America going on and on and on, filtering all they do through AIPAC.

Hillary was in town this week... but as I've said before, "There were no feasts in Cairo when Hillary was nominated Sec State." She was politely received but I don't think the new government here will looking to America for "Middle East" momentum.

The interim government already announced that the scandalously low prices Israel pays for Egyptian natural gas is under review... a bit gleefully because the graft that was presumed the source of very low prices Israel pays has been exposed and it was Mubarak's son who personally walked away with some millions or dozens of millions when the deal was made.

The Daily News Egypt (Herald Tribune affiliate) seems to have given the Hilary visit a few column inches but I can't find anything at all in the Egyptian owned The Egyptian Day. Now that I look closer, ED did have a note about her visit on Tuesday. 71 words. America is finally getting the attention in deserves in Egypt: very little.

Today, Egypt woke up to the happy news that the Security Council approved a no-fly zone for Libya.

Al Jazeera English had carried a rambling speech live by Ghaddafy late yesterday evening saying the conquest of Benghazi would occur overnight - house to house.

I had had the AusAID application for Samoan breadfruit to West Africa to complete and transmit to Pretoria for Tues and then Tues, overnight copy editing for a translation service client and then the same thing for another on Weds night - my sleep was out of whack right up to last night when I went to bed at 11, I think, and then I went off to bed with Ghaddfay's words ringing in my ears... fearing they might be true.

But Ghaddafy's troops didn't enter Benghazi overnight and now, perhaps, they never will. There was footage of the joyful Benghazi masses dancing in their town square and, a vivid memory to me, a older-middle aged man in very tribal dress speaking perfect English and beaming ear to ear thanking the outside world, mentioning America first... it had been many years since I had heard an Arab thanking America for anything.

For what it's worth, I had sent my first letter (email) ever to the Yank embassy here some days ago. I pointed out to the ambassador that America's reputation is so low in the region that America could probably begin, without recrimination from anyone but Gazzafi (as the Egyptians call him), digging itself out of the hole it had dug for itself by helping the Lybian Revolution along in some small way while Europe decided what best to do.

There was much to celebrate in Egypt this week, too. The Army, The Youth and other trusted revolutionaries hammered out the constitutional amendments that will be voted on tomorrow.

That arm of Interior that was most despised - 100,000 secret police - was dissolved this week and they are now all officially unemployed.

The issue was forced through events in the far south, southeast of Cairo over the last couple weeks. In Helwan... a separate Governate ("province", or, as with Cairo, Giza, 6th of October City and Helwan, a city so huge it is, administratively, a province/governate).

There had simply been no police presence since some days before Mubarak fled to Sharm El Sheikh. They had killed what was then known to be at least 350 revolutionaries and were totally discredited on the world stage. The Health Department is now documenting what may be as many as 500 such murders because police were using standover tactics in the hospital morgues through those days, forcing the doctors to submit autopsy reports giving false causes of deaths for many of the people so slain. But the doctors, in the main, filled out but refused to sign those false reports so the initial round of adding more police murders to the history of those days involves the fairly simple task of going through the certificates of death from those days and scrutinising those that don't have drs' signatures. Then there is to be another round, or perhaps somewhat in concert with the first, of examining all deaths due to trauma from those days that do have drs' signatures, added to the process of community members arriving to the responsible public records offices to make sure members of their family murdered by the police in those days are actually on the list of murders by the police from those days. The final tally will probably be fairly complete as those various methods of working backwards through it are pursued. And of course the health care professionals are very anxious to do that after being forced at gun point to develop those false records in the first place.

So nobody wanted the police back.

But then some weeks ago now a church was razed by fire in Helwan and Christian youth took to the streets in protest and the Muslim youth came out to protest the protest (it only takes one bad egg to burn down a church). It all got fierce because there were no police to separate the two groups, and 13 people were killed, about half Christian and half Muslim. The army did well in ending the violence over what seemed a couple days but then came the public realisation / acceptance that there would be more such situations developing if there was no return to normal officer presence... the Army people not able to operate as quickly - chain of command - or as knowledgeably - in terms of knowing the neighbourhoods and their issues. So about that time the traffic police were suddenly back but it seemed to be just them for the moment. Then there was a continuing simmering and flaring of the situation in Helwan and I think the police were ordered or requested back to normal duties by the Army.

So then there was that "what police" question in everybody's face and within a few days news - midweek, this week - the announcement that the "security" police were no more and those who had been so employed are now simply out of a job. They've gone off the payroll. Perhaps some fraction of the 100,000 people involved will be absorbed into other Interior units but maybe not. Any action by the Army to legitimise anything out of Interior is viewed with enormous suspicion.

Other big news would probably start with the scheduled referendum for Saturday, 19 March - tomorrow - to approve the constitutional amendments. Reda, my wife, says the vote is on and she will be voting but there is the following datelined yesterday in AlMasry AlYoum (The Egyptian Day):

Some 2000 judges have threatened not to participate in the supervision of the 19 March constitutional referendum, citing procedural irregularities in the selection of judges.

The announcement comes as the Supreme Judicial Committee supervising the referendum urged all citizens to cast their votes in the poll on Saturday.

The judges threatening to boycott the referendum claim the committee used “favoritism” in choosing certain judges to supervise particular polling stations.

They also said the committee chose 52 judges who happen not to be working in Egypt, in addition to another 47 who are dead.

They further said the committee did not regard the principle of “seniority” in its selection of the judges.

So... a bit fuzzy around the edges for the moment. There is, however, now an Army internet page showing the polling places so it seems to be going ahead.

Distressingly, the Army is now doing the same kind of stuff as the police once they have people in custody. The following is also from The Egyptian Day:

Civilians who were detained by the military last week gave testimonials on Wednesday recounting the torture that they endured and saying that thousands of innocent individuals remain in military custody.

Families of detainees, some of whom received military sentences while others remain in detention with no charges brought, tearfully pleaded for their release.

Rasha Azab, a journalist who was detained on 9 March, said during the press conference that the people remaining in military prisons went on a hunger strike on Wednesday in protest at the abuses they have been subjected to.

Human Rights lawyers condemned the prosecution of civilians in military courts and the military's torture practices and called for public pressure for the release of the detained.

These were, I think, the two or four thousand people arrested early in the week who wouldn't leave Liberation (Tahrir) Square... who wanted everything "right now" and wanted to keep the square shut down to traffic 24/7 until they got it.

I'm not, actually, sympathetic towards those small thousands arrested - the routine is that one engages in civil disobedience, one gets arrested, and one's cause is promoted by the publicity, etc. There will be one million perhaps out again today as there will every Friday into the weeks and perhaps months ahead. One day a week is proving to be enough to keep the ball rolling for the moment.

But it's just amazing to me that they would be tortured by the Army and... some of them... already sentenced to 5 years in prison by 5 minute trials in military kangaroo courts. So the Army Supreme Command has some new issues about its credibility which developed, one would hope, from the Army's insufficient instructions to and supervision of their people "on the ground." Certainly the convictions will be judged basic habius corpus violations as the Army has no power to try civilians... and the pendulum is already swinging the other way - there was enormous reaction to all that.

So, in the shadow of Libya's civil war and Bahrain's use of foreign troops to subjugate and murder its own citizens, those are some of the highlights for the week from Egypt.

Thank you for your time,
Jeff

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03 April 2011 - Sun – These past two weeks

There was a sizeable Friday gathering at Liberation Square (Tahrir) for the first time in weeks. A news report - English newspaper web site, I think, rather than TV - spoke of tens of thousands. But I don't find anything in the online newspapers mentioning firm numbers tonight.

There's a piece about three weeks of Sudanese protests at the UN High Commission for Refugees and its closure on Thursday due to increasing aggression towards UN staff:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/383443

I think of the Sudanese as having a special status and I noticed something about this recently - certain jobs that are closed to all foreigners except Sudanese. I remember them protesting in 2005 as there was a persistent rumour in their community that the UN would give them passports "good anywhere", etc. The protests got more and more viral and the police stepped in. The press, at the time, discretely avoided mentioning that, as the above reports: "police ... killed at least 23 people, including children" at that time.

News about protests over the ignorant, hick-rascist pastor in Florida burning the Koran - UN personnel attacked in Afghanistan and seven killed:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/383805

"Head of Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces Hussein Tantawi will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday to discuss efforts to reconcile Fateh and Hamas, Palestine's two leadership groups, said Egyptian diplomatic sources on Saturday:"
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/383610

The trial of former interior minister Habib al-Adly for murder, money-laundering, etc. is set to begin Sunday:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/383488?amp

Salafis destroying Sufi shrines in Alexandria (Sufism is kind of a Shi'ia thing and their saints and shrines repugnant to Sunnis and Salafis):
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/381918

Oh, here's the online report about Friday's protests mentioning "tens of thousands" (in Egypt as a whole) whose key demand was immediately prosecution of Mubarak for his very long list of crimes. A good long article in The Daily News Egypt where The Egyptian Day (AlMasry AlYoum) had nothing I could find:

"We came here to complete our revolution by bringing corrupt figures to court, to fully remove the regime by discharging governors and disbanding local councils," said Amr Masoud, a physician. :
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egypt/tens-of-thousands-in-cairo-alexandria-demand-prosecution-of-mubaraks.html

From the fearful back alleys of Pyramids,
Jeff

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13 April 2011 - Weds – El Kalaboos

So these young revolutionaries have pretty good timing. They gave it a rest the Fridays two and three weeks ago but they had a very large gathering at Liberation Square (Tahrir) again last Friday specifically demanding that Mubarak and his sons be committed to detention and now they all are except Mubarak himself who is under armed guard in hospital and facing detention when he gets out:

http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egypt/egypts-ex-president-and-sons-detained-for-investigation.html

CAIRO: Egypt's prosecutor general announced Wednesday the 15-day detention of the country's former president, pending inquiries into accusations of corruption and abuse of authority in an unprecedented investigation of a former ruler in the Arab world.

The announcement was the latest in a dramatic series of events surrounding the probes against top former regime officials, and came just hours after former President Hosni Mubarak, 82, was hospitalized with heart problems in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

(more)

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/398447

Dozens of people marched in the streets of 6th of October, west of Cairo, Wednesday, after hearing news that former President Hosni Mubarak and his sons are to be detained for 15 days.

They marched around al-Hosari Square, raising Egyptian flags.

Mubarak and his two sons, Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, face investigations on corruption charges. The former president is suspected of being involved in decisions to shoot at pro-democracy protesters during the 25 January revolution.

Thousands of demonstrators had protested in Tahrir Square on Friday, calling for prosecution of the Mubaraks and other former regime officials.

 Reda had gone to the southeast suburb/city of Helwan on Tues to do more of her retirement paperwork (she retires Thurs so I'll be at her office through most of the day, too). And Tues I had gone downtown to get my  visa. But Tues Tahrir was packed with demonstrators again, the "Mogamma", Federal Office Building, was blocked by the protests and I called Reda, who was done with her business and had downtown business for Weds as well, so we stayed at her cousin cum brother Assim's little hotel, Assim regaling all there, as usual.

We got going at 8am and it was a half hour early for Immigration to be open so I got a nice Yank cuppa at McD's and walked around Tahrir Square, seeing for the first time the parts of the sidewalks the demonstrators tore to pieces with their bare hands and with pieces of steel ripped from fences and gates... mining the footpaths for stone to throw at the police who were killing them.

Here's a piece on the Tuesday Tahrir protest that blocked access to Immigration (at Mogamma) - a continuous holdover from last Friday that finally saw the Mubarak's detained:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/398702

So people such as myself who were just plainly cursing the concommittant traffic snarls finally had reason to be glad for them.

The crooked Israeli natural gas deal that Gamal Mubarak (younger son of Hosni Mubarak) closed, walking away personally with ~$12 million(?) is being renegotiated:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/398842

NATO bumbles along in Libya protecting "civilians only"... but one might hope...

The French have outlawed the veil in public and the first day it was in force there were thousands of women who hit the French streets wearing full veils in public. But our local English language papers aren't reporting that anything more happened last night or through the day.

Let's see... Mubarak got arrested and the value of the Egyptian pound started going up for the first time in yonks.

Mubarak's wealth has been estimated at $70 billion:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/396030

A group of lawyers believe they now have the evidence to prove that Gamal Mubarak ordered the police violence that saw what are now known to be at least 680 murders by police nationwide:
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egypt/lawyers-activists-accuse-gamal-mubarak-safwat-el-sherif-of-leading-counter-revolution.html

I can't find any editorials in the English language press here that are complaining vociferously this week.

The revolution has become institution.

Thank you for your time,
Jeff

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20 April 2011 Weds - "846" murdered in Egyptian Revolution

I have culled the papers daily for any good news for Palestine and generally find none. Little news on Palestine at all. It will be time before there is a government in place that makes what I hope will be monumental changes in Egypt's relationship with Israel and Palestine. A kind of aside is that Gamal Mubarak is now said to have personally walked away with over $150 million upon the signing of the cut-rate-natural-gas-for-Israel agreement of several years ago. The deal was made in 2005 or 2006 when I was here in Cairo. Or perhaps it was 2006 or 2007 when I was back in Canberra and reading about it online. I wondered at the time who's hands got greased on that one at it turns out to have been Mubarak's son, Gamal (the "smart" one).

The news in the last week is more and more about "blood". Blood that was shed. And the blood that will now be demanded of the leaders of the old regime. Mubarak and his sons are in detention and... first things first... they are apparently going to immediately face murder charges for their activities during the revolution and there is a prevailing nuance in the press that this may result in death sentences for all of them.

The "final" report on regime murders during the revolution came out yesterday and puts the total at 846 with 6467 injured/wounded.

Al Ahram, the semi-official English version at least, that I so admired for their "opinion" on America with respect to Israel and Palestine (cf., www.americansincairo.org) is now in the process of frantically digging itself out of the hole they dug for themselves with respect to their, granted-compulsory, failure to report and opinionate on civil rights and political freedoms in recent decades. Something can be captured of their current transition in their main reports this morning:

Egypt's fight against corruption has just started

Transparency International brings together a host of prominent actors in Egyptian civil society to identify the key steps needed as the country emerges from its corruption-laden years:

Fact-Finding Committee releases report on the January 25 Revolution

The other English language on-line dailies have similar takes on yesterday's release of the fact finding commission and this "Battle of the Camels"  is especially held up as an example of the Mubarks' personal culpabilities and the dire consequences for the demonstrators in those days before the army was actually intervening:

Fact finding mission says 846 dead and 6,467 injured in Egypt's uprising

AlMasry AlYoum (The Egyptian Day): http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/406169

Rather abbreviated compared to Al Ahram and Daily News Egypt but more than them, as usual, on the society-wide revolutionary scene:

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/echannel/News

including, that the Salafis are abandoning their "obedience to authority" here and in other countries, now that they won't get thrown in prison, and have weighed in on yet another ridiculous Egyptian Christian>Muslim/Muslim>Christian conversion saga:

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/406490

AlMasry AlYoum (The Egyptian Day) has the most detailed report of the continuing repercussions of the Armed Forces Supreme Command dismissing what seems dozens of governate (state/province) governors, and their dreary decision to replace them, entirely, with "new" members of the armed forces and police/security services (i.e., all the past governors have always been appointed by the president or something, they have always been career military or security people and the AFSC is in the process of dismissing heaps of them, only to replace them with "new" career military or security people - and Qena Governate is the only one is which these august decisions have been protested vigorously):

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/406318

As always,
Jeff

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29 April 2011 - Fri - Royal Wedding

I got home from Friday prayers and Reda was still glued to the royal wedding.

"They’re married now," she said. "The ceremony is over."

"Now they will have sex," I said.

"They've already had sex," she said without removing her eyes from the TV. "They're Christian."

Other things to celebrate as well. Kind of a happy day for the pro-Palestinian American-Australian in Egypt... the front pages of Friday's English newspapers online are all a-buzz with:

http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egypt/egypt-sending-team-to-help-realize-palestinian-deal.html -

CAIRO: Egypt will send a security team to the Gaza Strip to help implement a reconciliation agreement reached by rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas, an Egyptian security source told Reuters on Thursday.

Restructuring and unifying security forces in Hamas-run Gaza is a key condition for the success of the accord, brokered by Egypt on Wednesday to overcome a rift that had stifled a Palestinian drive for independence.

An Egyptian security delegation will head to Gaza to help settle and organise the internal security situation there, now that the reconciliation agreement is finally in place," said the security source, who declined to be identified.....

The others all present similar front page coverage:

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/416559
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/10994/World/Region/Egypt-sending-team-to-help-realise-Palestinian-dea.aspx
http://213.158.162.45/~egyptian/index.php?action=news&id=17643&title=Egypt%20sending%20team%20to%20help%20realise%20Palestinian%20deal

While Haaretz (a progressive Israeli paper with a very wide distribution) reports on Netanyahu's shrill demand that America have nothing to do with said rapprochement:

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/netanyahu-presses-for-u-s-action-over-fatah-hamas-deal-1.358706

and the Jerusalem Post headlines presented it's usual sort of rabid reaction:

Lieberman: National unity deal partners Abbas with terror:
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=218404

Other newspapers around the world were in the main concerned with the royal wedding in UK. Two billion people following it on TV already this morning... my utterly rapt wife included... I tried to make conversation but she seems to have hung out the "Do Not Disturb" sign.

Bedou blew up the natural gas pipeline to Israel again a day or two ago:
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egypt/repairs-on-arish-gas-pipeline-may-take-two-weeks-says-official.html

If there is any one thing that soon brings the millions back to Tahrir of a Friday, it will certainly include the "trials" of civilians in military kangaroo courts:

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/414434
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) don't really seem to understand where they are in space and time.

There are a lot of internal inconsistencies in the general revolution environment, e.g.,
Egypt backs Syrian regime, receives sharp criticism (jcm: they could have just said nothing)- http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/416758

- while at the same time - Government studies banning NDP members from elections -
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/416711

I went back to my www.americansincairo.org website for the first time since the revolution and see I last updated in October of last year (as I had, sort of quarterly for about 5 years). It had presented nothing more or less than a usually weekly chronicle of Al-Ahram "semi-official" opinion that had, for years and years, been deadly accurate about the utter senselessness of American positions on Palestine, why they were doomed, how long it would take them to fall apart, how they conflicted with rights-based approaches, etc. ad nauseam through decades when Mubarak was polite enough not to personally point out this stuff to American officials personally. Whatever Al-Ahram's domestic coverage, it would have been nice if the American presidents had been strapped into straight-jackets every Friday morning and been made to listen to someone read the stuff linked. I'll update it up to some early week of the revolution and leave it there for posterity. Mubarak knew exactly what was wrong with what America was doing and exactly how useless it would be to say so officially.

These days Al Ahram's daily news portal "hot links" on page one seem to be dominated by news of the national and international football scene as they cast about for a new image in their "real" reporting.

Digging through the week's reporting by all the English on-line papers for some notion of how life goes on in revolutionary Egypt for this last week, I link the following piece on Qena, the only governate (state/province) with the hutzpah to protest the replacement of the old governor, appointed by Mubarak due to his stellar military/police career, by another, appointed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces for his stellar military/police career:

http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egypt/qena-residents-divided-on-fridays-million-man-march.html

Thank you for your time,
j

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30 April 2011 - Sat – Hamdullah

Egypt to throw open Rafah border crossing with Gaza: FM (in a matter of days) -
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egypt/egypt-to-throw-open-rafah-border-crossingwith-gaza-fm.html

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14 May 2011 - Sat - “Tens of Thousands Flood Tahrir for Palestine"

 

http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egypt/tahrir-protesters-call-for-national-unity-show-solidarity-with-palestine-dp1.html
Tens of thousands of Egyptians flooded Tahrir Square to support the group that leaves for the Rafah Crossing Saturday with aid for Gaza and to make good on recent rumblings through the population and interim government to open the Rafah Crossing and normalise the comings and goings of people from Egypt to Gaza and people from Gaza to Egypt.

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/435404
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/435327
http://english.ahram.org.eg/

Alexandrians marched by the thousands on the Israeli consulate:
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=220426

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the 1948 Nakba and East Jerusalem and other flash points are heating up:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/palestinian-teen-dies-of-wounds-sustained-in-east-jerusalem-clashes-1.361622

Obama's Middle East "peace" envoy has resigned (who wouldn't?):
http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/mitchell-quits-as-u-s-mideast-envoy-but-backs-obama-s-mission-for-peace-1.361586

There is no breaking news about the convoy to Palestine this morning in Egyptian, Israeli, or the Al Jazeera portals but Al Jazeera has a good summary article on the Egyptian Revolution for the week:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/05/201151323296787604.html

Mubarak's wife has finally been arrested (for looting some of her charitable foundations, I think):
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/05/201151318265179790.html
http://www.haaretz.com/news/mideast-in-turmoil/mubarak-s-wife-hospitalized-in-intensive-care-after-arrest-1.361609

The Supreme Command interim military regime is to reconsider decisions of its kangaroo courts, especially 7 year sentences in 5 minute trials of protesters in March and April:
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/human-a-civil-rights/scaf-says-to-reinvestigate-trials-of-all-revolution-youth.html
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=220459

Back to yesterday's, Tahrir events... secular groups in Cairo had been calling for a day of Christian/Muslim solidarity in the aftermath of another church burning and 12 deaths (6 and 6) when Salafis, accompanied or infiltrated by thugs with guns, marched on a church where a certain woman (rumoured to being there and held captive in the church) who seems to have converted to Islam so she could get divorced (there is neither civil marriage nor civil divorce in Egypt, essentially - one gets married in church or mosque and, if Muslim, divorced according to Sharia (but there is no divorce allowed in the main Christian denominations here)). So Salafis marched on the church, the thugs started the church on fire and a gun battle erupted between the thugs with the Christians defending the church... Christians in general taking to arming themselves for lack of intervention by security forces when thugs or gangs of Muslim youth start shooting at them. This is the first time thugs have shown up with Salafis anywhere.

If there is impunity, as there usually is when Muslims attack Christians, it doesn't bode well for the fate of the Christians during through the coming months of the interim regime, the thugs now provocateurs trying to get the populace to clamour for the old regime when Christians were "safer" and riot of any kind broken up faster.

There has been no report in the news outlets of whether the Salafis solicited participation by thugs or if the thugs, under pay of rich sympathisers of the former regime, paid them to watch for such opportunities and spread chaos. No "findings" yet by the interim regime's analysis of the events of that day. They were hired guns when part of the "security" apparatus and now they've shifted to these kinds of activities. In neither the old regime nor the present interim situation have they been held to account.

The dozens of Salafi satellite TV channels are now freer to comment on politics but there is the strange mix of their financing... generally wealthy Saudi and Gulf individuals... they have no other economic basis... which refrained from dissent / criticism and preached or implied obedience to the regimes (in which the billionaires who finance the various channels had great interest) and what they now see as an opportunity to dominate politics in Free Egypt and impose stricter Sharia, the source of all law presently (it is stated in the present constitution).

Cooler heads will prevail in the long run, given the general demographics, but the Salafis do constitute a force to be reckoned with for the moment, coming as they are, from illiterate migrants from Upper Egypt and the Delta (who feel like they are living in sin city) through a broad range of income and generations of residence in Cairo all the way up to highly educated professionals who simply never stepped out of the mould of mosques (usually small) obedient to the mosque's head imam, who they address and refer to as "Sheikh This-or-That"... the sheikhs having strong informal knowledge of and cooperations with others of their ilk... enough to "hijack" Tahrir yesterday in any event - the Youth having actually called for a Muslim-Christian solidarity day, wanting, essentially, to chastise the Salafi for marching on the Imbaba church mentioned above. So the first big pro-Palestine day at Tahrir has that dark cloud hanging over it and that should be kept in mind as the Palestine issue unfolds, the convoy to Gaza, involving general participation and not a specifically Salafi initiative, also being hijacked by the Salafi to some extent through association with a sort of launch from Tahrir yesterday.

So that is to take some of the news reports and commentary at face value. Viewing the video streams from Tahrir yesterday and the news agency photos of Tahrir today, I actually see few bearded men in galabea (the Salafi "trademarks") so maybe it isn't as bad as all that, the people with Palestinian flags for the day coming from all walks of life and not wanting to miss the first large pro-Palestinian day, the news agencies themselves, by Thursday, reporting that a great pro-Palestinian gathering was the theme for Friday more than they were announcing the Muslim-Christian solidarity theme.

Anyway, the pro-Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi groups brought in the biggest PA system for the day and held the stage.

So life goes on in Egypt's Revolution of 2011.

Thank you for your time,
Jeff

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17 May 2011 - Tues - Palestinian reconciliation

I am very happy today to send Australians for Justice and Peace and other friends the following late-breaking news stories:

resumption of Fatah/Hama talks:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/440452

the day's outcomes:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/440653

and a long note in yesterdays press about Norman
Finkelstein's visit to Cairo, peace and blessings on his name:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/439292

Thank you for your time,
Jeff

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28 May 2011 - Sat – Rafah opening permanently today

Hi Australians for Justice and Peace in Palestine friends and others.

Cross your fingers. The news is that:

http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egypt/rafah-opening-boosts-hamas-as-egypt-adjusts.html

 

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©2011 Jeffrey C. Marck
Egypt