EGYPT: May a picture worth a thousand words

El-Sisi

is

A Parasitic plant:

Hydnora Africana

 Living on his intentional division of his own people. What a bastard!

 Wake up, Egyptians!

EGYPT: The Egyptian president, El-Sisi gives his nation the lazy eye.

 From Muhammad Nassir to El-Sisi

After a harsh speech addressed to the nation by El-Sisi

  
Satire

Good evening, Sisi! I hope you are fine!

My cousins have a message for you.

They are a group of idle young guys.

A half of them is starving.

The other half is scavenging garbage pins.

My friends at the café would kiss your hand.

In fact, they damn the circumstance that brought you to power

A group of revolutionary guysm, they are.

Some belong to 6-April, some are liberal.

Others are Ikhwan recuperating in prisons.

Damn be he who upsets you!

By God, do not be upset.

You look like you have lost weight.

Your suite has become loose and your face looks pale.

Your teeth are shaking as if your heart is aware that something will happen.

Do not worry, it is the cursed nation.

A nation that does not know what is good for her.

A nation that is ungrateful.

A nation that deserves a low-life president.

You are far from being a low-life.

How cute you are though the nation is starving!

I am here just to tell you a few words to make you happy

Words that are like a sickle…cutting through my skin.

When you said, “Have you elected me to torture me?

I am going to complain to the nation.”

Man, complain to who about who?

You were so nervous because you did not like those who are talked about you,

though they were the pupil of your eye.

They have sold out all their principles to support you.

Have they been a bit harsh in their citicism?

May they suffer!

But those were your men.

How many times they applauded for you!

Be careful! Do not let yourself be exposed!

Anyways, do you remember when they ousted Morsi?

Have you forgotten?

What a cruel heart you have.

A bunch of media people upsetting you!

Were you not the lion?

Need you a spell against envy?

Are you forgetting?

Is not Egypt your father’s  real estate.

And the nation is but your slaves.

Flog them!

Use your club!

Oh, you look so tired.

Allow me to say a truthful word.

You are right,

There are bad people who want to torture you with their criticism

They blame you for what?

Are you not the brave General?

Do not cry and hush them up with issuance of a presidential decree.

And say to the nation,

“My beloved people who are the light of my eyes,

I have decided to gather your opinions of me in a survey”

The millions may show up singing,

“Come back, our president”

Did not Amr Adeeb ask you to be more abusive so that we wake up and understand?

They say you have sold us an illusion.

So What!

It is not your fault.

The faulty one is he who agreed to buy.

They needed a good dream.

Do the survey.

What nation!

They have no interest in silk but in a cheap fabric.

Have not some purchased apartments in your illusionary one-million-apartment project

And others are now possessing million acres of land?

A nation you made mount a rocket,

And brought to them your illusionary medical shish-kebab project.

Between you and me, let me tell you,

you do not look well.

You look worried like someone who has been exposed for his lies.

If you need to rest for a while, then do it.

And let me tell your people,

“El-Sisi is right. He said that he was of you, that you asked him to be careful.”

He is careful.

Do the survey and show those who are plotting against you how beloved you are.

You were right when you once said that this nation did not have someone to take care for it.

Get closer, then, to your people!

Remember Tamarrud when they stood against Morsi and said,

“We do not want you because the streets are not yet secure,

Poor people still poor, we still beg for funds from foreign countries,

We and the country have lost our dignity,

The economy has collapsed and is now relying on begging,

You have become an American agent,

By God, tell me, is not this what it is right now?

You know what; you have already split the family

Go home, if the burden is too heavy for you to carry

Or be a man and do the survey!

EGYPT: Did Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novella by George Orwell predict the current Egyptian situation?

Animal Farm

Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. 

According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin ("un conte satirique contre Staline"), and in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), he wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole".

The animals of the Manor Farm live in a bad situation because their farmer Mr. Jones, a mean and always drunk man, exploits them. One day Old Major, an old pig, called a meeting of all the animals and told them about a dream that he had had the previous night. He had dreamed about an old song 'Beasts of England' that started a resistance against the human beings. Everyone was very excited. But Old Major died a few days later and two young pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, started leading the preparations for the Rebellion. About three months later they revolted against Mr. Jones and they took over the farm. The purpose of the revolution was to create a fair society made only by animals and based on seven commandments like “Four legs good, two legs bad” and most important one: "All animals are equal". They also changed the name of the farm to "Animal Farm". Snowball, an inventive and vivacious pig and Napoleon, a big and cruel-looking pig, started to fight for leadership. In the meantime Mr. Jones wanted to get the farm back but the animals succeeded in the battle and Mr. Jones was forced to run away. 

One day, when Snowball announced his plans to build a windmill, Napoleon arrived in the farm with nine big and cruel dogs that made Snowball run away bleeding. From that day Napoleon was the real dictator of the farm; if an animal didn't agree with him, he was eaten up by his dogs. If something went wrong (like when the windmill they'd worked so hard on was wrecked), Napoleon blamed it on Snowball, who, according to him, was sneaking around Animal Farm ruining everything. When Boxer, the strongest horse in the farm, lost his strength because of old age and fell while he was building a windmill, Napoleon sent him to be slaughtered. Now Napoleon had pity on nobody. He and the pigs were like Mr. Jones - they exploited the other animals, they took advantage of the foolishness of some animals and they came into contact with human beings for business although they had said it was forbidden. In the end they became like human beings, they started to walk on their hind legs and they changed the old maxim with a new one: “Four legs good, two legs better”. Nothing was changed and their resistance seemed to be useless.

Egyptian 

Junta including El-Sisi

EGYPT: Eksisi's Egypt...

The Egyptian president, El-Sisi...may he rot in hell!

An Egyptian found unconcious and people brought him to the hospital where he was thrown on the floor for 8-9 hours like a dog unattended until he died. 

For non-Arabic speakers, pleas advance video to 2:25 to see the man on the floor.

Egyptians, 

this is what you're in Sisi's eyes!

EGYPT: The Nahla (bee) dance and El-Sisi

Exactly! Sisi is stripping Egypt from her cloth piece by piece in a Nahla (bee) dance untill she becomes completely naked. Any body in it for some honey?

What a shame!

It ran, runs in the blood. Will it keep running?

 

EGYPT: Egypt, Egypt, Egypt...

Low turnout as Egyptians shun elections designed to shore up Sisi

In absence of opposition parties, experts say the result is a foregone conclusion but a low turnout suggests that the strongman president is losing popularity.

Egyptian voters appear to have shunned the first phase of a parliamentary election that president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had hailed as a milestone on the road to democracy but which his critics have called a sham.

Polling stations visited by Reuters correspondents on Sunday pointed to a turnout of around 10%, in sharp contrast to the long lines that formed in the 2012 election. A low turnout suggests that Sisi, who has enjoyed cult-like adulation, is losing popularity.

“It’s not going to matter. It’s just for show, to show that we are a democracy, and we have elections,” said Ahmed Mostafa, 25, who works in a lab.

The vote for the 596-member parliament will be held in two phases ending on 2 December, with Egyptians abroad casting their votes for the first round from Saturday.

But with an absence of opposition parties – such as the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, which has faced a deadly government crackdown overseen by Sisi – the poll has not inspired the enthusiasm witnessed for Egypt’s first democratic elections in 2011.

Experts say the outcome of the election is a foregone conclusion and only voter turnout will be a gauge of popularity for Sisi, who has enjoyed cult-like status since he ousted his predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Most of the more than 5,000 candidates in the polls support Sisi and are expected to dominate parliament.

Hazem Hosny, political science professor at Cairo University said: “This parliament will be a parliament of the president. It’s really a parliament … to keep things as they are, to give an image of democracy.”

Many Egyptians, tired of political turmoil since veteran leader Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011, support Sisi, who has vowed to revive an ailing economy and restore stability.

Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected civilian leader, was ousted by then army chief Sisi on 3 July 2013, after mass street protests against his divisive year-long rule.

The ensuing government crackdown overseen by Sisi targeting Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement left hundreds dead and thousands jailed.

Hundreds more, including Morsi, have been sentenced to death after speedy trials, which the UN denounced as “unprecedented in recent history”.

Sisi, meanwhile, won a presidential election in 2014.

Scores of policemen and soldiers have been killed in jihadi attacks since the crackdown on Islamists began, with the Egyptian affiliate of the Islamic State group leading a deadly insurgency in North Sinai.

Sisi enjoys support from western countries who have signed major arms deals with Cairo to back him in the fight against jihadists.

“Sisi is our soul … without him we would have been migrants like those from other countries around us,” said Buthaina Shehata after she cast her vote at a Cairo polling booth.

The constitution empowers parliament to move a no-confidence motion against the president and gives lawmakers 15 days to review all presidential decrees.

But experts say the ability of lawmakers might be close to zero given the absence of any real opposition.

The Brotherhood dominated the last assembly but is now banned after being blacklisted as a “terrorist organisation,” while leftist and secular movements that led the 2011 uprising are boycotting the election or lacking representation in the polls.

It had been the main opposition force for decades, fielding candidates in parliamentary elections under Mubarak despite an official ban.

Its party took 44% of seats in the first free democratic elections following Mubarak downfall in 2011.

That parliament was dissolved in June 2012, but the Brotherhood’s popularity shone through days later when Morsi, a civilian, was elected, putting an end to six decades of presidents coming from military ranks.

As Egyptians abroad started casting their ballots on Saturday, Sisi appeared on television calling on citizens to vote.

“Celebrate the choice of representatives and make the right choice,” he said.

“I am expecting Egyptian youth to be the driving force in this celebration of democracy.”

Of the 596 lawmakers being elected, 448 will be voted in as independents, 120 on party lists, and 28 will be presidential appointees.

The main coalition is the pro-Sisi For the Love of Egypt, which includes leading businessmen and former members of Mubarak’s National Democratic party. It aims to win two-thirds of the seats.

The openly pro-Sisi Salafist Al-Nur party, which backed the ousting of Morsi , is the only Islamist party standing.

About 55 million voters are eligible to cast their votes in the two-stage election across the country’s 27 provinces, with polling in the first stage to be held over two days.

Any run-off in the first phase will be contested on 27-28 October. The second phase starts on 21 November.

'The Egyptian government is waging a war on civil society'

With the revolution an ever more distant memory, Egyptian rulers are clamping down hard on NGOs

A toddler waves the Egyptian flag in January 2012 as protesters celebrate the one-year anniversary of the revolution. A year and a half later President Morsi would be removed from power by the military. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

 Rania Al Malky

When the Egyptian government announced last month that it had dissolved 57 NGOs, all accused of having links to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, it was just the latest step in a process which, under the guise of anti-terrorist policy, is tearing apart the carefully woven fabric of Egyptian society.

The war on civil society has come in two forms, with the main target being the Muslim Brotherhood. Back in 2012, after the elation of the 2011 revolution, the MB candidate Mohamed Morsi became Egypt’s first ever democratically elected president. But after the army removed him from power in July 2013, the new government moved swiftly to clamp down on both the Muslim Brotherhood and its civil society activities.

An extra-judicial announcement by the interim cabinet declaring the Brotherhood “a terrorist organisation” in December 2013 was followed by a court ruling. These moves have to date resulted in the seizure of 1,300 MB-affiliated NGOs, whose assets were frozen, their premises confiscated by the state and management taken over by the Ministry of Social Solidarity.

By July 2015, the number of civil society organisations shut down for allegedly belonging to the MB had reached 434, according to official statements. Some of those worked with some of the poorest people in Egypt’s poorest provinces. The MB’s Islamic Medical Association (IMA) for example, served 2 million sick patients and thousands of who were in need of kidney dialysis, all unable to pay for medical treatment. Their charitable, self-sustaining network constituted a parallel welfare system that often surpassed the “free” government educational and health services in both quality and efficiency – hence the group’s mobilising capacity.

Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie on trial in Cairo, May 18, 2014. Photograph: Al Youm al Saabi/Reuters

 

But in early 2015 the IMA was taken over, its board of directors replaced by pro-regime figures from the health ministry and a new chairman appointed: former Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa – notorious for his anti-Brotherhood rhetoric.

The Muslim Brotherhood has not been the only victim of the regime’s crackdown on NGOs. Over the years, the Egyptian government has capriciously targeted other NGOs with a slew of laws effectively criminalising their activities. It has particularly singled out organisations calling for social reform, political liberalisation, and respect for human rights and workers’ rights.

According to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, while Egypt’s NGO law is one of the most restrictive in the world, the “effect of the restrictive legal framework … has not been to ban civil society outright but rather to give enormous discretionary powers to the Ministry of Social Solidarity”. All civil society must register with the government, while – as in other countries – counter-terrorism legislation is also invoked against “any association, organisation, group or gang” that attempts to “destabilise the public order or … endanger social unity.”

As a result, organisations and individuals crossing certain red lines are “increasingly forced to operate in a climate of fear, limitation, and uncertainty”, and intimidated by ad hoc security probes.

Mohamed Zaree, a lawyer and researcher at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) tells me that the law practically equates what they do at the institute – raising awareness of civic rights or calling for group action in the form of peaceful protest or strikes – to what Islamic State is doing on the border. “We too can be accused of ‘endangering social unity’ or ‘threatening national peace’,” he says.

The real objective of these laws and the related character assassination media campaigns targeting civil society activists, he explains, is to close the public space and restrict it to official government activity or pro-regime voices. “Basically, they are created to terrorise people like us, to terrorise press freedom advocates, workers’ unions and even political parties. They will have no effect on someone who has no problem blowing himself up,” he says.

Refusing to register in response to the government’s recent ultimatum, Zaree’s Cairo Institute is now under investigation sharing the fate of other organisations like the Hisham Mubarak Law Center for receiving foreign funds.

“The regime has no issue with foreign funding, they have an issue with what we are doing,” he says.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), one of the most respected and influential human rights organisations in Egypt, has taken a different tack, deciding to register to cut the red herring of their legal status out of the debate, which has initiated a long-winded cat-and-mouse process. In the meantime they have had to downsize from 80 staff members to 40 and limit the foreign funds they are receiving.

“The model we built [relying on foreign funding] was unsustainable,” says Gasser Abdel Razek, executive director of EIPR. “We had a golden opportunity to capitalise on millions who called for human dignity in 2011 … we have a huge following and this is what we need to build on.” He is now seriously examining the option of crowd-funding through membership contributions.

Protest by supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi, 06 Oct 2015. Photograph: APAImages/Rex Shutterstock

 

The registration deadline not only sent shockwaves across civil society circles, but also forced donors to hold off on supporting organisations which have hitherto survived under the radar, circumventing government oversight by registering as not-for-profit companies.

A development worker employed at a foreign state’s donor agency tells me that even donors with no controversial political agenda in the region have made no disbursements directly to human rights programs in the past year.

Funds have been given to support UN or EU projects in the safe areas of women’s rights and FGM eradication, but anything beyond that has become risky, the development worker says. “It’s dangerous for them to receive money.”

They still finger-print

EGYPT: Is journalism now a crime in Egypt?

New anti-terrorism law takes Egypt into Orwellian territory

Published on Monday 17 August 2015.

Reporters Without Borders condemns a ban on media reports that conflict with official accounts of armed attacks and operations by Jihadi militants. The ban is part of an anti-terrorism law that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ratified yesterday in the absence of an elected parliament.

“Is journalism is now a crime?” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire asked. “In Egypt clearly yes, because the Sisi regime is using this new ‘anti-terrorism law’ to ban journalists from contradicting its own version of events."

“Egyptians are entering an Orwellian world in which only the government is allowed to say what is happening. Even in countries where freedom of information is highly restricted, laws rarely suppress pluralism so blatantly. Egypt is sinking ever deeper into a terrible despotism that not only wants to control information and detain journalists but also put them under even more pressure than during the Mubarak era.”

Published in the government gazette, the new law provides for fines of 200,000 to 500,000 Egyptian pounds (23,000 to 57,000 euros) for anyone disseminating “false” information about bombings or other operations by armed groups. A journalist who, for example, gave a bombing death toll at variance with the government’s, could be convicted of a criminal offence.

Ever since Field Marshall Sisi seized power, the authorities have been using the fight against terrorism as grounds for systematically persecuting journalists who do not toe the official line.

With at least 15 journalists currently detained just for doing their job, Egypt is ranked 158th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.

 

EGYPT: Isn't El-Sisi Al-Hakim Be Amrel-Lah Al-Fatimi?

One of history's most controversial characters is Al Hakim Bi Amr Allah. Seen as God incarnate by some, as an eccentric "mad" ruler by others, and vilianised by yet others.

Al Hakim was a Caliph of the Fatimid dynasty of Egypt, North Africa, Palestine and Syria. Contrary to the majority of their subjects, who were Sunni, the Fatimids were Shia of the Ismaili branch. They engaged in missionary work to spread their sect's belief as wide as possible.

Al Hakim reigned from 996 C.E. to 1021 C.E, having acceded to the throne at the young age of 11, he lived to be only 36 and ruled for 25.

Some pro-Fatimid sources are too lenient on him, and do not elaborate on his character and eccentricities, such as Wikipedia's entry, or the Institute of Ismaili Studies in the UK, or the quasi official Ismaili.Net web site. On the contrary, most Sunni sources take a very hostile attitude to him, saying that he claimed divinity for himself.

Al-Hakim's Eccentric, Erratic and lunatic behavior

Al Maqrizi sums him up as: "he did not stick to one thing. If he inclines to something, he would show it and then force people on it. Then he would abandon it, and then force people to abandon it to whatever he is now inclined to".

Al-Hakim repeatedly exhibited erratic, eccentric and contradictory behavior. He seemed to have been keen on the morality of his subjects, repeatedly issuing orders for this to be done or that not to be done. This goes as far as micromanaging what is eaten and what is not. Moreover, he would forbid something then later allow it. He would repeatedly enforce trivial orders he issued.

Different orders and prohibitions, but the same pile of shit; steamy and stinky

• Orders not to knead dough with legs, and prevented eating of some foods, and the slaughter of cows that have no progeny except in feast days, or those that are not good for plowing fields.
• Ordered that people should not eat Molokheya, the national dish of Egypt, since is was liked by Mu'awya, nor water cress since it was liked by Aisha the prophet's wife.
• Ordered that fisherman should not go for fish that has no scales, nor that any such fish be sold or consumed. Note that this is similar to Jewish law, and the Hanafi school in Sunni Islam. In Egypt this would forbid the Nile Catfish which is commonly consumed in Egypt.
• Ordered that weights and measures be calibrated and no one to cheat others on those. Forbade the manufacture and sale of a certain drink because Ali forbade it.
• Ordered that wine and bananas be forbidden as well as other drinks, scaleless fish, stinky lupins.
• Ordered that all honey be destroyed.
• Ordered certain times for the Azan (Call to prayers) for the mid day and afternoon prayers.
• Order that at the celebration of the Nile's annual flooding there will be no singing, and no drinking in the boats, and arrested some people.‏
• Ordered that no one is to go outside on the streets before dawn or after the last evening prayers, and punished those who did.
• Ordered that no one should go out of their house after sunset.
• Ordereddogs to be killed and discarded them in the desert. Ordered the streets to be sweeped and cleaned. 
• Bells rang in the streets and ordered that no one should go into bathhouses unless wearing something to cover his mid body, and no woman is to show her face on the street, nor attend funerals nor wear revealing or onrate clothes.
• Here is a case where he ordered house arrest for two ex-officials, who were in-laws to each other. Then after a few months. I guess these are the lucky ones, since there were not beheaded and burned like others, including Ibn al-Noman's cousin, and predecessor as Chief Judge.
• Arrested fishmongers who sold fish without scales, as well as bath house rules violators and those who drink a certain drink.
• Arrested and punished thirteen men who prayed a pre-noon prayer.
• Enforced rules about Molokheya and Fish.
• Forbade selling raisins, first more than 5 pounds, then even small amounts, and it was thrown in the Nile. Perhaps it was used in wine making, as below.
• Forbade selling honey in amounts exceeding 3 pounds, perhaps lest it is made into mead.
• prevented women from going outside, going as far as closing the bathhouses for women, not differentiating between young and elderly, and preventing the shoe makers from making any footwear for women, causing some to go bankrupt. To the extent that some elderly women and female servants were arrested. Ordered that people should cover their body in bathhouses and that Christians and Jews have to wear different dress, and punished those who didn't do so. Again punished those who violated bathhouse rules. Enforced the bath house rules and had some violators beaten. Prevented women from erecting makeshift shades in graveyards when they visited.
• Prevented onlookers from going to the slave market unless they are selling or buying, and separated males from females and made them on alternate days.
• Punishing officials then forgiving them.
• Since Al-Hakim was feared by officials and subjects alike, he used to punish some officials, then after a while he would forgive them. They were both executed later. 
• Chess sets were collected from various places and burned.  Then this was enforced more by corporeal punishment of violators of the decree.
• Instated Khums/Fitra/Najwa tax alms, then Removed them.
• Instated several Shia related taxes, called Khums (= One Fifth), Fitra and Najwa. Then, he revoked them!
• Removed Excise/Customs then Reinstated them.
• Allowed Petitions, then Punished Petitioners. Usually, when a ruler is riding through the city, people will present him with written petitions. Either for injustice that needs redress, or asking for money. He would sometimes respond to the petitions by granting them. Later, he would order petitioners to be imprisoned! Then again, he would accept the petitions, then again he would refuse them and refer them to his cousin (and heir apparent) and the chief judge.

If this isn't lunacy, then what is??!!