If you can't beat them (or imprison or defame them)...

Thank you to Moftases for the photoshopping on the royal head.

Flaxing muscles

I went to a sit-in today in downtown Cairo by workers from the Tanta Flax and Oils Company. About 350 men have been sleeping on the pavement there since Monday, in the cold, because they’d like to be able to feed their families, and sometimes wages don’t come without a fight. It’s the usual story: public sector company is privatized and sold off. Investor buys it (at a huge discount) and then proceeds to slowly and systematically dismantle it with a view to selling the land on which the factory stands and making a tidy profit.

The only problem is that new investors are contractually under an obligation to “protect” the workers who come as part of the package, which means that they can’t just sack them, shut up shop and walk happily into the sunset, pockets bulging. One common strategy is to force workers out on early retirement, another to make life as intolerable as possible (especially for those active in defending workers’ rights) in the hope that they will quit of their own accord. The results are invariably a reduced, and demoralized workforce.

While Egypt’s steady privatization has made it a star pupil with the World Bank, these policies are far from popular amongst the people they most directly affect, as it well known. I spoke to one worker today who told me that he had the option of joining a private firm but opted for Tanta (when it was still government-owned) “because the state protects me in a way private companies won’t”. Tanta workers are not the first formerly public sector workers I have spoken to who reject the idea that the government doesn’t owe them anything after the integration of their company into the private sector. In fact, several such workers I spoke to continued to refer to themselves as public sector employees.

I’m poorly equipped to discuss with authority the economic merits or otherwise of Egypt’s privatization process, but its effects as I have witnessed them have largely been extremely negative. And certainly the trickle-down benefits lauded by the architects of this process has yet to be felt amongst the majority of Egyptians. But I really understood as I spoke to workers today that the privatization process is an affront to some workers not merely because it (usually) impoverishes them and threatens their working futures. On an ideological level, men in their 40s, 50s and 60s are bearing witness to the tearing down of the last remaining vestiges of a legacy which has informed their whole lives; the idea that the state will protect them. Privatisation of these men’s factories is a multi-pronged attack. On their security, their livelihoods, sometimes their pride and always the belief system which has underpinned their whole existence.

Times and economies change and that’s life, some argue. There are always victims on the road to progress. Alas these victims are often steamrollered multiples times by this progress. Tanta workers have been battling for almost a year for basic entitlements. What they want now is either for their factory to work properly (raw supplies aren’t being renewed and machinery is being removed, they say preventing them from working) or for them to be made redundant with the severance pay they are legally entitled to. The company is doing neither.

It has offered them half of the sum workers believe they are entitled to as redundancy pay. Workers have recently been informed that they won’t be being paid January’s salaries because they haven’t been working (they were on strike). Yesterday, as workers were thinking about putting up a tent to shelter them from the cold security officers stormed their gathering attacking four workers in an attempt to get to activists from the Tadamon [Solidarity] group who have been supporting the workers. You can see a video of the arrest of the activists here. They were subsequently released shortly afterwards.

I went back the same evening and workers told me that they're not intimidated. But they also said that this is because this protest is their resort: there's nothing else they can do after this, and how can they go back to their families and the factory and Tanta having failed?

I had left the sit-in shortly before the attack happened, and encountered another of Egypt’s odd moments of irony. As I walked away, wondering whether Egypt’s government is in professional training for the Screwing Over Your Own People Olympics or just doing it for fun, I walked onto Qasr El-Eini and found it empty. Big men in suits and shades carrying machine guns in 4x4s were parked on the side of the road, waiting to escort out parliamentarians. Behind them a sea of cars, ordinary Egyptians, were being held up. Without wishing to labour the image – you get the idea – walking along, the workers’ chants still audible behind me, it felt like yet another huge Up Yours from the men in charge.

Guide to writing about Egypt

Authentic modern Egyptians. Bonus point for donkey. Source here

REJECTED BLOG POST FROM CAIRO

In Egypt, writing an article follows a formula as old as the pyramids themselves*

By: I be earnin big Gs, baby

CAIRO: Your first paragraph, and you will use it to paint a stunningly authentic picture of Egypt for your inferior, under-traveled readers: a pastoral scene of the Nile Delta perhaps, or a portrait of poverty in Cairo’s gritty, urban chaos as described to you by your stringer. There will probably be a headscarf in there somewhere, being gently caressed by the wind of Egypt’s uncertain and precarious future.

Whatever you choose, your first paragraph must mention at least one of four things: the Nile, the Pyramids, overcrowding or Egyptian fatalism.

“At this point, a quote is long overdue,” chuckled Mohamed Father of Eight, who will usually be employed in something sufficiently blue collar-y as to give what he says that all-important authenticity. Make sure however that he is mellow and an exponent of the famous Egyptian sense of humour - despite the fact that he is being fucked over sideways by life.

You will describe Mohamed either cheerfully smoking a sheesha in a sidewalk café while resigning himself to God’s will, or masterfully cutting his way through Cairo’s notorious traffic in his taxi, throwing out colourful expletives at other drivers to the symphony of the capital’s car horns.

“Insha’allah what I say will include a word in transliterated Arabic. The reader will recall hearing this word during the pharaonic dress-up party on the Nile cruise he did in 1994 and realise that he has a deep and unshakable understanding of Arab culture and Islam in particular,” Father of Eight said, inevitably and suddenly looking older than his 40 years.

But you have lived in Egypt for eight months and were once told by a man in Dahab that you speak Arabic better than Egyptian themselves: useful because you attempted to use this expert Arabic at the police station later, after you realized that the disaffected youth had pinched your wallet because he can’t afford to get married in Mubarak’s Egypt.

In short, unlike your cosseted reader, you realise that the seemingly mundane minutiae of Egyptian society are portents of something more sinister, and also a useful way of filing copy when news is slow.

80 million Egyptians disagree. You know however that the double shock of Sadat’s 1980s economic opening – or Infitah [your readers wont know this one. You are superior] – and the Dina video scandal has deeply scarred this nation and rendered the opinions of the general public irrelevant vis-à-vis your theories.

“Another quote at this point, this time by an expert who will gladly come out with any old bullshit in order to see his name plastered all over your international publication,” commented Dr. Bo2ayn Aihkalam, author of El Forsa Betdo2 and a part-time dental hygienist.

“I will hold forth on the downtrodden Egyptian people and gladly back you up on your assertion that a phenomenon which is more or less common to all mankind is unique to this country,” Aihkalam said, speaking in his clinic on a busy Wednesday afternoon.

Now draw tenuous links between all the above. If your story is a political piece suggest that the creation of a Facebook group called “Elboradei lovers” with 312 members one of whom is wearing a green t-shirt means that Egypt is on the cusp of an Iran-style revolution.

Try to squeeze in a reference to Copts, bloggers, the Muslim Brotherhood and bread queues if at all possible. Mention sexual harassment, the African Cup of Nations, succession and Amr Diab and you will have a royal flush, sir.

If however your story begins with either “letter from Cairo” or “Cairo journal” you are relieved of journalistic duties such as fact checking or conveyance of useful information.

Structure your story in ever shorter, staccato sentences.

Thus.

Make sure to talk a load of bollocks.

After a long and uninteresting journey mostly round your own prejudices the reader will be conveyed to his final destination.

Which is that, in the eternal city, when Egyptians have colds, they sneeze.

* This post is a blatant rip off of this brilliant idea, and was written in rage after reading this.

A few 'yo mamas' would have been quicker

I just want to record here because I forget these things, and because I have nowhere to record them, that this man:

Cracked me up at a protest I covered today.

He had something against People’s Assembly chief Fathy Sorour. I mean more than the usual dislike of Fathy Sorour. It was personal, I felt. Like Fathy Sorour had introduced this man's sister to crack cocaine or something. He stood outside the metal barriers for about 40 minutes, and every time someone chanted something, he tailored it to assuage his Sorour vitriol.

Thus:

الحزب الوطني هو المسئول

The National Democratic Party is responsible

became

الحزب الوطني و سرور هم المسئولين

The National Democratic Party AND Sorour are responsible

and

يا مبارك ساكت لية انت موافق ولا اية

Mubarak why are you silent, do you approve or what?

became

يا مبارك و يا سرور ساكتين بية ..الخ

Mubarak and Sorour, why are you silent...etc

but my favourite was this:

مصر لكل المصريين!

Egypt is for all Egyptians!

which our friend rendered

مصر لكل المصريين ما عدا سرور

Egypt is for all Egyptians except Sorour.

Occupy in the sky.

This is where Tony was hiding the WMDs

Tony Liar’s appearance before the Iraq Inquiry coincided with the release of this heartbreaking short documentary film on the killing of a nine year-old boy by the Blackwater private security company, and my reading of a book called “In Cairo With Kitchener”, published in 1917.

“In Cairo with Kitchener” is a gem of a book, written before governments had to dress up imperialist ambitions as acts of philanthropy, before they had to go through the tiresome processes of securing a United Nations rubber-stamp for their invasions and justify their actions retrospectively, eight years too late.

“In Cairo” is written by Sydney A. Moseley, a British journalist who spent two years in Egypt, and who is largely motivated by a desire to complain about interference in the publication and content of his book by Lord K himself. Moseley is a name-dropper par excellence and is the type of journalist who likes to shoehorn himself into the story, so this act of censorship seems to have thrilled him.

Mosely writes in the book’s preface that the Al-Shaab newspaper reported that an introduction had been written by Minister of Public Works Ismail Sirry “Pasha”, without Sirry actually having read its contents. Sirry, “having learned that the book contained many reflections on the British Agent [Kitchener]…has gone round telling all those he met that he did read the book before writing the introduction”.

We are told that Sirry did not know that Moseley would take an attitude of “frankness and independence” in his book. References to Kitchener in the edition I read were unreservedly sycophantic, so I can’t understand both what the author means by “frankness and independence” nor what the bloody fuss was about.

In any case, a strange irony has been given to the book, 90 years later. Moseley unwittingly reveals the British occupiers in all their crass, orientalist, arrogance - but he also says a couple (very few, admittedly) of things which still ring true today.

Below are some of Moseley’s thoughts on his sojourn in “the Land of Paradox”, as he insists on calling Egypt.

“There are evils in Egypt which exist not so much as a result of British policy, but because of the crass stupidity and overwhelming conceit - which always go together – of individual officials. These persons, some of whom I mention in the following pages, constitute themselves as modern Egyptian gods and expect idolatry of Ra in the twentieth century. Those who have been inured to the enervating and narrowing atmosphere of the Land of Paradox accept this well enough. The few bolder, who do not go so far as to worship, take care, nevertheless, not to blame where they are unable to praise.” - Note the separation between “individual acts” and “policy”, a favourite stratagem of the politician. No comment on “modern Egyptian gods”.

“’Robbers and blackmailers are, in Egypt, treated more fairly than editors accused of infringing the Press Law.’”

“The suppression of newspapers and newspaper men in Egypt is nothing new”. - Ya ragel.

“This unparalleled interest in his [Lord Kitchener’s] coming can only be set down to the reputation and prestige he had gained on the banks of the Nile. There could, indeed, be no plainer proof of the old saying that nothing strikes the Oriental imagination so much as success in war”. – Obama still busy trying to strike that oriental imagination.

“It is unusual for an Egyptian crowd to cheer” – he forgot to add, “under occupation”.

“It is true that on this score [Egypt’s 1st parliament] criticism has not been lacking; but while one who desires to record a situation as it actually is must examine such criticism, it should be borne in mind that a first parliament, like the first of lesser institutions, must take time before it can be rid of its defects. Only time and British representatives can do that”. - vomit.

Moseley wasn’t entirely oblivious though, and devotes an entire chapter to the consideration of “Why the Englishman is disliked”.

“The statement has been made by bewildered [LOL] British students of Egyptian politics that the Egyptian does not like the Englishman. This charmingly frank and innocent conclusion is arrived at with a tinge of bitterness…

After all we have done for them – which they fully admit – they will be glad to see the back of us [fancy that!].

Strangely enough, these writers have said nothing of the Briton not liking the Egyptian. Perhaps these students failed to notice the stand-offishness of the superior British official towards the common Egyptian. If they had given heed to this obvious fact they would have saved themselves a host of doubts and theories. The British have a natural aptitude for governance abroad [they beat insubordinate natives round the head with their stiff upper lip]. This must have originated before our advent in Egypt ; for, well as we have done there, we could have accomplished much more – the friendship of the Egyptian, for instance – if we had been wiser in our choice of civil servants. As it is, we appear to have been at pains to send our snobs to Egypt. The Land of Paradox has become the City of British Snobs.”- Again, the policy isn’t wrong, IT’S THE INDIVIDUALS. Got it???

“The fact is, the cringing and abjectness of the native have transformed many responsible Britons in Egypt from masters tolerant towards their inferiors into the kind of tyrant who recalls Egypt’s darkest history”.- It’s the natives’ faults, just like in modern day occupations where occupying troops commit atrocities because of the pressure of having to fight those ungrateful recalcitrant natives. Btw Moseley thinks that Egypt’s “darkest history” was under the Turks, who he intensely dislikes.

“The more general type of man who schemes for an “unfettered” Egypt is generally the bloated half- Turk, half-something else, whose interests, in the main, are mercenary and nothing else. He has actually no more aesthetic sentiment about the political state of Egypt than a gamoose. Let him obtain unlimited fodder at the expense of others, and he will content. It was individuals of this type who wrote the pages of Egypt’s blackest history. Heaven forfend that we should permit him to hold sway again!” – heaven forfend indeed!

“Consider yourself very fortunate that you, an outsider, should have been chosen for this wonderfully good fortune [of the British occupation. I kid you not]. You know that the reason why we sent great Englishmen thousands of miles from our own misery in order to keep yours was because circumstances, in the very inspiring form of finance, necessitated those early steps…Since he was already there the Englishman thought he might just as well knock the country into shape; for the surroundings, after all, were good to look at and the climate most inviting.” – That is: right we’re here robbing the country, let’s build a few roads.

““Self-indulgence and corruption have eaten the heart of the Turkish oligarchy,” wrote Lord Milner.

“It is the curse of the whole vast region which still lies under the blight of the Ottoman dominion, that the governing classes are devoid of the morality which essential to governing well”.

That class would again govern Egypt if England left Cairo to-day”.

I'm always astonished that countries formerly occupied by the British didn't collectively invade Britain and beat its rulers around the head with the latters' sense of entitlement.

Moftases has extracted the most important parts of the Habib and Mofeed interview

here.

Erring on the side of distortion

Mubarak decided to make national police day a public holiday this year. While national police day isn’t a recent invention, this is the first year that the Egyptian public gets a day off out of it. My own explanation for this sudden act of lie-in generosity is that Mubarak - inspired by countries which have several bank holidays - decided that there is no reason why Egypt shouldn’t have public holidays named after one of its most hated institutions.

The idea of a national holiday in honour of the police is so unchallengeably farcical that it is hard to believe that the authorities penciled it in the national calendar with a straight face. Tellingly, Interior Minister Habib El-Adly said during a TV appearance on Sunday that Hosny Mubarak decided to make it a national holiday so that the sacrifices made by Egyptian policemen against the British occupation wouldn’t be forgotten. Past glories are extremely useful for filling in the blanks of today.

I can’t resist a few words about the El-Adly appearance. He was interviewed by Mofeed Fawzy, one of my favourite presenters.

مفيد فوزي و هو بيحاور صباعه

Fawzy presents a programme called “Talk of the Town” in which he barrels around Egypt being pompously sycophantic with anyone more famous than him, and humiliating and badgering the proletariat. I first encountered him during a fit of insomnia some years back when I didn’t have a satellite dish, and was suddenly confronted with this troll-man at 2 a.m., bearing down on prisoners in Alexandria’s Borg El-Arab prison. I particularly remember that he interrupted one startled prisoner doing a timed exam in order to chastise him about his life of crime and lecture him on the dangers of recidivism.

There was none of that with our Habib, of course. The interview was conducted in a room resembling the Mohamed Soghayar hair salon waiting area, which we were told is in the Interior Ministry. Habib and Mofeed were seated on chairs on a shag pile rug. The rug resembled, to some extent, Mofeed’s hairpiece, though of a lighter hue. Mofeed spat out questions at Habib in the unique fashion for which he is famous, namely verbosely and interminably, and often in highfaluting modern standard Arabic.

Habib meanwhile spent practically the entire interview trying to make his eyebrows reach his (rapidly retreating – even his hair is scared of the police) hairline, while giving circuitous and nonsensical responses. Ever eager, Mofeed finished off many of Habib’s sentences; such is the time that the latter spent saying “errrrr”.

I had always understood that holding public office requires a degree of fluency, and dare I say charisma, but should have learnt better after John Major. There is also a major difference between holding, and impounding, public office, as Habib, who has been in the job since 1997, might like to errrrr about if asked.

Needless to say that since the interview was broadcast on state television, Habib is not pressed on anything (even though Mofeed regards himself as iconoclastic, and the Jeremy Paxman of Egyptian television). You can see the load of pie in the sky codswallop Habib comes out with here (apologies for linking to myself, I can’t find anything else in English). I was astonished though, by his frank admission that security bodies re-detain individuals given court release orders where these bodies “know” that the individual in question poses a threat. As I understand it, most countries either deny that their security bodies do this, or locate such practices on distant, non-touristic, Caribbean islands - so as to avoid contaminating their justice systems.

Mr Useful and the Qatari Channel of Discord

Al-Ahram published one of its gems on Saturday, an article which forgets it is an article and is essentially just a propaganda fax from the control room with a bit of filling in the middle.

It’s written, sort of, in the form of a long speech made by Dr. Mofeed Shehab, minister of legal affairs, except that in the middle it references Shehab himself, and has the feel of a man in a raincoat muttering to himself in the corner of a pub about the rapture.

Here Shehab manages to combine some of Egypt’s favourite bête noires in a long tirade which is ostensibly a response to the iron wall Egypt is building on its border with Gaza.

It’s a bit like when you ask for the Bee Gee’s Saturday Night Fever at a disco, and the DJ decides to get creative and plays a medley of their greatest hits.

I had a laugh reading it and translated some of it. I left out some of the duller parts, as well as a long bullet-point list of the many plots planned by those dastardly Palestinians in the motherland, foiled by our glorious security bodies.

All the stuff outside the square brackets is a translation of what’s written in the ‘article’. Content inside the square brackets is a mixture of Shehab’s thoughts - which I sucked out of his head using my superpowers - and me just saying any old shit.

(And I’m not a professional bloody translator so don’t start).

SHEHAB: THE WORKS ARE TO SECURE OUR BORDER WITH GAZA

During all the crises confronting the Egyptian state, we search for a means of managing national issues in the face of campaigns targeting political decisions, such as what happened two weeks ago in relation to the engineering installations on our eastern borders [GIANT FUCKING UNDERGROUND IRON WALL], the aid convoys and other controversial topics.

Media treatment – and I mean here the television programmes and satellite channels – has disappeared from the scene, and has not performed the full role we want and wish for. It’s true that a large number of Arab satellite channels have been established, at the head of which is of course the Qatari channel of discord [THE DEMONIC AL-JAZEERA] itself, which has installed itself as a sovereign ruler on our land and as usual spread its anti-state and anti-regime poison [AIRED OPINIONS OTHER THAN THOSE HELD BY THE EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT] in order to plant discord and inflame the Egyptian and Arab street with the aim of causing a clash with official institutions [QUESTIONING OF THE OFFICIAL LINE].

It launched its attack on Egypt just as it did during the barbaric attacks on Gaza a year ago. Its programmes, news bulletins, correspondents and guests – well-known and carefully chosen – were all used to attack Egypt and even to cast doubt on its judiciary, as a dishonoured Nasserist [DOES ANYONE KNOW WHO THIS IS?] did while discussing the public prosecutor on the channel of discord last Tuesday. It didn’t of course occur to the presenter Lina Zahreddin to ask him about the extent of the independence of the Egyptian judiciary!!

This presenter and her channel and her bosses didn’t utter a single word in condemnation of the arms, rockets and smart bombs sent to Israel to be used against Gazans from Qatar’s many bases. The channel of discord is an Israeli tool par excellence; it took the news about the Egyptian building works from the Israeli media [ONLY THE EGYPTIAN GOVT IS ALLOWED TO DEAL DIRECTLY WITH ISRAEL, NAMELY IN THE FORM OF CUPS OF TEA AND LAUGHS WITH NETANYAHU] and started formulating its usual conspiracy theories [WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY NOT WHAT I AM DOING].

The Egyptian media meanwhile has not performed its role of countering this and presenting the state’s position and plans in full [VOMITING OUT THE PARTY LINE]. It has been unable to answer the doubters and those with interests and agendas who call themselves Arab nationalists. These individuals and their relations and sources of funding must be exposed before public opinion. States bodies have many examples of these individuals. People who support Iran and Hamas at the expense of our nation must be exposed [. There cannot be a single second of doubt that the people of Gaza are not more important that Egyptians. It is true that we stand with Gaza [BEHIND OUR GIANT WALL], but the priority is Egyptians [WHOSE LAST NAME IS MUBARAK].

The armed forces are implementing the engineering installations [BERLIN WALL] in order to improve Egypt’s border with Gaza. It is being carried out as part of a plan aimed at securing Egypt’s borders and ensuring the safety of its land and people [WHO ARE FACED WITH THE TERRIFYING DANGER OF GAZANS BREAKING THROUGH THE BARRIER IN ORDER TO GO SHOPPING]. Dr Mofeed Shehab said that the installations being created by the armed forces is part of its Constitutional responsibility to protect the country and its land and ensure its security.

These installations are not new but rather a continuation of development in this area. Current events gave impetus to them – it is enough to consider what the world witnessed on 23 January 2008 when tens of thousands of Palestinians stormed the Rafah Crossing [AND WENT SHOPPING], and in 2006 when armed men stormed the cement barrier on the border and destroyed a large section of it. I ask all Egyptians and nationalists: do you accept the violation of your country’s sovereignty , and is there a country in the world which leaves its border open to anyone coming and going and abusing it as if we are fair game for anyone?! To anyone with a critical mind or in collusion against their country [QUESTIONING BUILDING A GIANT FUCKING WALL IN ORDER TO DESTROY TUNNELS WHICH PROVIDE BASIC GOODS TO A PEOPLE UNDER SIEGE], I ask: Why do you defend those who kill and blow themselves up in tourist resorts in Sharm El-Sheikh and Taba and Dahab and even El-Azhar [BECAUSE IF YOU ARE AGAINST US YOU SUPPORT TERRORISM. BUSH EL EBN SAID SO].

Those who spread discord and ignite fires forget that Gaza is still under occupation according to the provisions of the 1907 Hague Convention. It has not been liberated and Israel governs everything within it, its ports of entry [WHAT WAS THAT YOU WERE SAYING ABOUT SOVEREIGNTY] and movement in and out of it. Individuals looking for revenge against their country close their eyes to the real issue of who is controlling Gaza and refusing conciliation with the people of their country.

They are the real reason – the crossing was fully open until the coup by Hamas against legitimate rule in July 2007 [WHICH IS WHAT THE NDP CALLS ELECTIONS]. Hamas is choking Gaza’s people and Israel is helping it in this. Egypt however has never tarried in its role and has never been late in sending aid across the Rafah Crossing. Goods are piling up in Gaza, especially via the Rafah Crossing and even via the tunnels, and Hamas imposes customs taxes on everything smuggled in and keeps this money for itself [WHEREAS WE JUST STEAL LAPTOPS IN AIRPORTS].

*But why isn’t the Rafah Crossing kept open all the time during the siege of Gaza?

* What is Egypt’s interest in closing the Crossing?

People who pose this question are waiting for an opportunity to attack the country and want people to believe that Egypt is taking part in the siege on Gaza [BECAUSE IF YOU QUESTION US YOU ARE AGAINST US]. Unfortunately everyone who asks this question has an answer for it. They have heavy consciences, they don’t follow God’s will, they violate the truth and mislead public opinion and fabricate [AND STEAL LITTLE GIRL’S SWEETS IN THE PLAYGROUND] for the following reasons:

1. Hamas’ coup is the reason for the closure of the crossings, including the Rafah Crossing.

2. Egypt is committed to not opening the border formally because of the absence of a legitimate authority and, in compliance with the 2005 treaty, in order to protect Palestinian unity and avoid giving Israel the pretext to shirk its obligations in the Strip in its capacity as an occupying power.

3. To stop Israeli ambitions and plans to divide Gaza from the rest of Palestine; Gaza – the West Bank – East Jerusalem.

4. The Rafah Crossing is for people and not goods.

5. Egypt is applying pressure for the other crossings into Gaza controlled by Israel to remain open. Egypt has nothing to do with these crossings and they are: Karem Abu Salem, Erez, Kesoufeem [sp.?], Sufa, Karni and Nahal Oz.

6. The flow of aid through the crossing has not halted and Egypt has facilitated in all ways possible the passage of aid caravans in conformity with the rules set by Egypt.

7. Every country in the world protects its sovereignty and ensures the security of its land in cooperation with its neighbours. No state accepts the infringement of its laws, and it punishes those who do infringe them.

8. The attack on Egypt is organised. Israel was not subject to a similar attack by Arab satellite channels and some politicians and opposition figures when it built its racist wall [AT LEAST NOT HERE IN LA LA LAND]. This places all of these people in the same basket with regional powers who have adopted the inflammatory message against Egypt [DOCTOR THE MONSTERS ARE COMING].

These Egyptian measures are aimed at protecting our interests and our citizens against danger. They are necessarily and most definitely against the interests of Israel, which wants to push Gazans into Sinai where they will become refugees like Palestinians dispersed in several Arab countries and then the story will be over forever [AS HAPPENED OF COURSE WHEN THE ‘TENS OF THOUSANDS’ OF GAZANS STORMED THE BORDER IN 2008].

The media lacked information and the truth as it talked about the French people [THERE WERE ANOTHER 41 NATIONALITIES REPRESENTED IN THE GAZA FREEDOM MARCH BUT I WILL CONVENIENTLY IGNORE THIS] who came to Egypt ostensibly for tourism but who in fact had other motives - going to Gaza [SHOCK HORROR. IS THERE A SPECIFIC VISA FOR ‘GOING TO GAZA’?]. There has been a plan to deceive, and all the media fell for it. Most of these French people were Algerian women carrying French nationality [THIS IS COMPLETE TWADDLE BUT INDULGE ME] who took advantage of the protests for Gaza [TWADDLE DUM TWADDLE DEE]. These Algerian women are carrying the message of the Algerian media from the heart of Cairo [T WORD, AGAIN]. They appealed to human emotion but there was a political aim behind their actions. We all remember what happening in Khartoum and the consequences after the match on November 18 [A LOVELY DISTRACTION FROM HOW CRAP THE GOVERNMENT IS]

In this way Algerian women came to Egypt with French passports and in their hearts they have taken a position against Egypt [EL TWADDALO, AGAIN. IF IT WAS TRUE, IT WOULD AGAIN BE A REMINDER THAT EGYPTIANS AND ALGERIANS REALLY DO HAVE MUCH IN COMMON].

The 3rd lifeline convoy [Viva Palestina] and what happened afterwards is part of this outrageous role. There was never, at any time, an objection to the convoy’s entering Gaza – rather, there was a warm welcome [WARM AS IN STUCK UNDER THE SUN IN AQABA] with faith in Egypt’s role in reducing Palestinian suffering. However, the arrangements for the convoy made since August were carried out without Egypt being supplied with any information [THE REST OF THE WORLD KNEW BUT NEVER MIND]. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry, via its Embassy in London requested the convoy organisers – and at their head George Galloway – for complete coordination, but they carried on as if their entry into Gaza will be against the wises of the Egyptian state, and despite the prior notification that aid will be brought in via the port of El-Arish.

The operation’s organisers took this lightly, and decided to continue their journey via Aqaba demanding that they enter via Nuweiba. They made arrangements with a number of Arab and international media outlets, and corresponded via the Internet [GOSH!] in order to put Egypt under international pressure. The state refused to go back on its position [HEAR US ROAR].

Bella ciao

Note loads of foreigners, friendly copper cordon, absence of riot police

Egyptian government has been busy recently adding new chapters to its part-time project of an equivalent to ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ aimed at despots, called ‘How to Shaft People Within (and beyond) Your Jurisdiction While Not Giving a Shit About Popularity Ratings’.

Earlier this month pictures emerged of what is allegedly an underground steel wall along Egypt’s border with Gaza, designed to put an end to the smuggling tunnels which as we all know are used only to smuggle in weapons and artillery and not food and other basics which Israel (with Egypt’s help) has prevented entering Gaza since it imposed its siege in 2007.

Egypt is extraordinarily obsessed with asserting its sovereignty, in the same way that some short men feel compelled to prove to the world that an absence of stature in no way comprises their masculinity and virility. A better analogy is perhaps a bald man. My mother always told me to never trust a man with a comb-over. Egypt’s eastern border policy, with all its sovereignty chest-thumping, is clearly that of a bald man attempting to conceal the fact that he doesn’t have autonomy over his own border.

I might be wrong of course. Perhaps Egypt’s decision to restrict opening of its border with Gaza and prevent activists from the Gaza Freedom March and Viva Palestina from reaching the crossing is just serendipitous coincidence, a case of Israeli and Egyptian interests overlapping. Perhaps Egypt decided that it is in its national interest to prevent hundreds of foreigners from entering Gaza and instead have them wreak protest havoc in Cairo, thereby ensuring a double whammy of steel wall + foreigner-sprawled-in-front-of-traffic-outside-French- embassy bad guy international media spotlight.

The other theory is that this is all a vendetta against Hamas, that the Egyptian government is putting pressure on it to come to a deal about Gilad Shalit.

Whatever the reason, as usual it’s the Arab man on the street who’s being fucked over in all this. As I wrote this on Monday night there were reports on Twitter that journalists – Egyptian, obviously – were detained for a couple of hours in a police van during their coverage of a protest by 100 or so Gaza Freedom March members who have been camping out on the pavement outside the French Embassy since Sunday evening.

Anyone familiar with Egyptian protests will understand what occupation of a bit of pavement means in Egypt. This afternoon, I was at a sit-in outside parliament by workers from the Ahmoseto company. They were protesting for severance pay. The company owner – deeply in debt – has legged it, leaving the factory closed and them in the shit. As usual. When I arrived there were about 100 men occupying one stretch of pavement with another 500 or so penned in by security bodies around the corner.

About five minutes after I arrived the men began chanting Allahu akbar – negotiations with the government had finished and the men had been promised severance pay. Almost immediately an officious little man of about 25 in a blue blazer with gold buttons began telling them to leave. They’d got what they wanted, now bugger off.

When the man told me to push off I asked him who he was and he said state security. State security have apparently issued instructions to their staff ordering them to dress like the air stewards of a budget airline.

But to return to the theme, Egyptians have very little public space in Egypt and it is therefore expected that if anyone is going to get arrested during a protest attended by 100+ French activists and three Egyptian journalists covering it, it sure as hell wont be Serge and Pierre. Because in addition to being brutal arseholes, Egyptian security bodies are perfidious, ball-less scumbags just like their bosses.

I haven’t been following the Gaza Freedom March with much enthusiasm because if I wanted to join I wouldn’t be allowed to; people with Egyptian or Palestinian Authority (!) passports can’t, according to the website. The justification for this is that “it has been difficult for Egyptian citizens and people with Palestinian Authority passports to enter the Gaza Strip…So unfortunately we cannot take [them]”. I object to this policy. In addition to protesting the siege and torment by one people of another, this is a march against discrimination, and individual demonstrators of any nationality who want to try to enter alongside their more privileged European and American counterparts should be allowed to.

However, it’s always good to see the Egyptian government be given a hard time, and I hope that at some point in the future it is held to account for its actions.

Foreign activists organized a demo this afternoon outside the Journalists’ Syndicate. While trying to get the attention of a woman from Code Pink a state security officer who I am on nodding terms with asked me, “which group is she from?” having seemingly failed to notice that she was wearing a fluorescent pink t-shirt with the words CODE PINK emblazoned on it (and he speaks some English). He also seemed not to have heard of Code Pink, despite the fact that hundreds of foreign women dressed in pink are currently giving him lots of overtime. Stupidity seems to be part of the job description.

Later that evening there was another protest, this time organized by Egyptian activists and attended by some of the GFM members. I was tickled to notice that because this was an Egyptian-organised event, riot police and steel barriers were deployed, despite the fact that numbers were less than the earlier demonstration – when a row of ‘friendly’ plain-clothed policemen formed a loose cordon and chatted with the foreign women.

Overheard from a copper to one woman, while he chewed gum vigorously, smiled and winked: “Why you no talk about Afghanistan? Why you no talk about Guantanamo?”

Inside the journalists syndicate itself a press conference was being held, attended almost exclusively by hundreds of serious looking men and their beards.

After we left the demo and as we were walking down Champollian Street, Moftases and I heard the insistent thumping of a Tabla. It was coming from a side street. Looking down it I was stunned to see two veiled women dancing exuberantly inside a ring of chairs. A mechanic told us that we could approach them, and that it was a soboo3, the celebration of the birth of a baby. The baby was nowhere to be seen, which was good considering the volume of the music being played on the sound system.

We were invited to sit down, before bags of popcorn and sugared almonds were thrust upon us by a child. The dancing continued apace, with unbelievable sensuality, given that it was about 8.30 p.m. and less than ten metres away was a street full of mechanics. Barefoot and dressed in black, the women were exemplars of belly dancing its best, watched idly by a young man next to the decks who spent the entire time resting his chair on two legs against a wall. A group of three boys meanwhile watched transfixed the women’s arses talking sex, left right, left right.

As is inevitable Moftases and I were dragged up in turn to dance. Our arses said very little at all.

Egyptians often ask me why I choose to live in Egypt. I often ask myself the same question. Cairo is an exhausting, perplexing, cruel, bitch of a city. On some days it quite literally stinks; it gets in your nose and burns your throat and wraps itself around your lungs. On clear days there are still moments you feel you can’t breathe.

But then there are moments like tonight, when you turn a corner and find yourself in the middle of a giant Fuck You at Egypt and its iniquities. A stretch of pavement taken over by women, public space (finally, temporarily) owned by the people, a gasp of oxygen.

Uptown downtown nowhere ville

I spent this weekend getting knocked over the head by the many worlds which exist in Egypt, again.

A relative of mine is an event organiser, and she invited me on Friday evening to the launch of recently released new Land Rover models. My interest in 4x4s doesn’t extend beyond avoiding getting hit by them but two compelling factors persuaded me the evening would justify the need to get out of my pyjamas and leave my house: firstly, the high probability of an open buffet and, secondly, the fact that the event was being held in Uptown Cairo.

Uptown Cairo is on top of the Moqattam Hill. The last time I went to Moqattam was to photograph a police station where a man in police custody had been defenestrated. On the way back, Moftases and I decided that it might be nice to have a look at Uptown Cairo.

Now Uptown Cairo is not so much a gated community as a $4 billion fortressed community. A series of flapping flags bearing the insignia “Emaar” (an Emirati property development company) at the corner of a road announce its existence. The road leading to the development is long and windy and makes getting there without a car tricky if not impossible. Which is the point. When Moftases and I arrived at the gate that day posing as potential real estate buyers we were told that we weren’t allowed in unless a company representative takes us around, and that none work on Friday. Moftases has a 10 year-old Fiat with engineering issues which may or may not be material to the matter.

I wondered why they didn’t just build a moat and ask people to send copies of their bank statements via Bluetooth on their iPhones at the gate.

So on Friday night Moftases and I went back to the fortress. Moftases gaily called out “Land Rover” as we breezed past the gate, the security guide waved us through with his walkie-talkie like it was a wand, and we carried on further down the yellow brick road, eventually reaching the obligatory fountain next to a car park where we stepped out into a cold whose level of bitterness was someone between Tiger Woods’ wife and Egypt after That Sudan Match.

Because we have legs and are plebs, Moftases and I soldiered on through the inclemency, ignoring the group of men shouting out something behind us, until a lovely man informed us that a fleet of Land Rovers and Jaguars were conveying guests from the car park to the event location, approximately 1 km away. In we popped and 40 seconds later were deposited at the event marquee on Uptown’s “Street of Dreams” which reminded me of Brookside a bit.

The Facebook invitation to the event had what I now realise was a warning, rather than a recommendation: “Dress Code: GLAMOUROUS”. I had made the concession of putting on a necklace, but as ladies in mini skirts and fur coats floated in on clouds of rich perfume I realized that a brown wool cardigan affair with a stripey scarf and pink socks rendered me sartorially-speaking a badly coordinated Before to their After.

Luckily I didn’t care, and neither did the cheese smorgasbord buffet which Moftases (wearing a blazer) and I proceeded to demolish until we were made aware of the existence of a bar.

We watched the guests file in while coating our innards with cheese. Most were wearing my monthly (if not yearly) salary, they killed me. Cigar-wielding men greeted each other effusively. I was pleased to see that one man was wearing a Del Boy camel hair coat. Music played and drinks flowed and Egypt seemed far, far away.

Halfway through the proceedings Moftases and I went to have a look at the Emaar show home, a two-storey, four bedroomed villa offering lovely views over Cairo. This wasn’t the most expensive finish available we were told, if were prepared to shell out more than the LE 9 million that this particular villa costs.

LE 9 million will buy you a four-storey block of flats in central but ordinary areas of Cairo such as Dokki. The ‘disadvantage’ is that in these areas you are not hermetically sealed off from the rest of Egypt by a road and gate which keeps the unwashed carless and the car-driving undesirables respectively, away.

On Saturday I went back to Egypt for a Kefaya demonstration outside the high court, apparently to commemorate the five-year anniversary of the group’s first protest. As in 2004, Saturday’s protest was to do with impending elections. Kefaya leader Abdel Halim Qandil announced that Kefaya would be boycotting the 2010 and 2011 elections. With the usual bluster he declared that “the Public Group for the Egyptian People” would be created, composed of 500 “former and current opposition MPs, public figures and strike and protest leaders” who will form a “popular parliament” and elect an “alternative president”.




A series of civil disobedience actions like strikes and protests and a signature campaign, Qandil said, will convince the incumbent president to bugger off “freeing Egypt” from his presence, and leaving his seat to the alternative president.

Qandil, tired of thinking about thrash metal, now thinking about alternative rock

Qandil said that Kefaya was “extending its hand” to Mohamed El-Baradei, who is hanging up his Nuclear Atomic Agency hard hat and given the Egyptian media lots to write about now that the football saga has run out of steam by hints that he might run for the Egyptian presidency.

There is something a bit sad about Kefaya protests; perhaps the knowledge that with its protests and grand gestures, the group is pissing in the wind, and like Ayman Nour’s travelling circus, has become a joke. While the reasons behind the decision to boycott the elections are noble, it was probably in no small part taken because Kefaya does not have a credible candidate for the presidential election (even if the election rules allowed it to field a candidate), and understands that someone of El-Baradei’s stature would be unwilling to associate his name with the movement because that would mean instant death.

A mass movement without the mass is reduced to a collection of friends meeting up now and again to do a bit of chanting and remind the world that they are still alive. On Saturday, they were even bickering about whose turn it was to chant, which only deepened my despair. As I watched them I thought about Egyptians who possess the means to buy LE 9 million homes and LE 1.5 million cars, and wondered for the umpteenth time how change is possible in this morass where wealth (both extreme and absence of) ensures that political self-determination is either irrelevant or a luxury to the happy rich and the fed-up underfed who are both too busy chasing a dime to try to stop Egypt imploding.

Sometimes she remembers my name

My mother says: (5:30:39 PM)
Happy birthday!

Carah Sarr says: (5:30:51 PM)
Hiiiiiiii thanks :-)

My mother says: (5:32:00 PM)
You were born at 4.05 pm. I remember it well

My mother says: (5:32:20 PM)
Or was it 4.13?

Related links: This ridiculous article.

The beautiful game

“Football has developed quickly in many countries because it used to be part of the politics of the pursuit of power and the ideologies it serves. Rapidly, it became the expression of nationalism, patriotism and chauvinism, even before federations were established. More than most sports, it lends itself to tribal feelings: the collective effort, the team colors, the speed, the physical aggression.”

“Egypt should bomb Algeria”

My sense of patriotism has always been a bit skewed, I think because there can be no absolutes if your parents come from different countries (or planets, as mine do).

Another factor is the deep sense of bitterness that comes from never really belonging, or being accepted, to both, or either country. That’s a whole other story but in brief my identity is slightly nebulous simply because it’s always been defined (imposed) by where I am, and those around me.

An example: The day before Egypt’s first match against Algeria I went to the Algerian Embassy in Cairo and photographed Algerian fans there. I was approached by a woman who, once she discovered that I work for an Egyptian paper/am partly Egyptian (I never discovered what exactly got her goat) summarily ejected me.

A year ago I was at a protest where a lawyer refused to be interviewed because, he quote unquote, “doesn’t talk to foreigners”. I showed him my national ID card. He remained unmoved. Which reminds me of an incident which happened last week when a secretary registering my details in a hospital said (while turning over my apparently fucking useless Egyptian national ID card in her hand) “heyya el genseyya aih?” (What nationality?)

Which is not to say that I didn’t support Egypt during its World Cup bid. I did. How couldn’t I? Few things match the sense of collective joy I experienced when Egypt won the African Cup, and when Egypt beat Algeria on Saturday. There have been suggestions that an interest in football is a distraction from what really matters, that celebrating a victory by Egypt’s national team somehow gives legitimacy to the ruling regime, or that football fervour is a distraction. I disagree with these sentiments.

In the Egyptian context, football is one of the few areas where the ruling regime has little influence and practically zero relevance, despite the zoom ins on Gamal Kermit Mubarak every time a goal is scored. I also object to the suggestion that a love of football equates to manipulation by the regime, and that football victories are used to let off steam of anger which would otherwise be channeled into political opposition movements. To suggest this is to deny Egyptian football fans agency: some Egyptians actually just love football in the same way that the rest of the world does. It’s also dodgy and highly simplistic, because it links in with the theory that if football didn’t exist to distract the oppressed masses they would all be in their homes plotting the revolution. Where’s the evidence?

Which is not to say that a certain amount of manipulation hasn’t gone on off-pitch. Nationalism is wonderful when it’s positive, but its existence is necessarily predicated on the existence of other nationalities. And mankind likes groups and tribes, and these groups and tribes are necessarily defined by other groups and tribes. And therein lies the danger.

What’s interesting about Algeria and Egypt is that these are two very similar countries in terms of social identity, religion, economic status, oppression, etc. Which means that the Us vs The Unknown Other – the bogey man - element which is so often a theme in the Egyptian media has been more difficult to manufacture this time. The emphasis has been on the violent history of Egypt vs. Algeria encounters and on the suggestion that “our Algerian brothers” have somehow betrayed their Arab identity.

It all started with the allegedly fabricated attack on the Algerian team bus when they arrived in Cairo.

There is a video which shows missiles being thrown at the bus by Egyptian youths. The Algerian team claim that three of their players received head wounds necessitating stitches as a result of the “attack”.

The Algerian team’s claims were almost immediately dismissed as made up by the Egyptian media, and eventually the public prosecution office. I didn’t read a single news item which questioned why – against a backdrop of extreme tension in the run-up to the game – hotheaded fans were allowed to get so close to the Algerian team’s bus. The difference between the team’s entrance to Egypt and their exit from Cairo’s stadium after their defeat was stark, and amounted to about six central security trucks and two riot trucks complete with armed soldiers. The truth about how damage was caused to the team bus is almost irrelevant here. Egypt had a duty to protect the Algerian team. It failed. Whether or not Algeria protected the Egyptian national team when it was in Algeria is irrelevant, because duties are not defined according to the extent to which others fulfil their obligations.

The most interesting thing in all this business was the reaction to the shameful attacks by some Algerians on Egyptian interests in Algeria (Egyptair offices, Orascum employees) after Algeria’s defeat in Cairo.

Egyptians have been fucked over routinely in the Gulf ever since Egyptian migration to the Gulf began. Exploited, abused, vulnerable, unpaid, relieved unwillingly of their passports, injured…Where’s the domestic outrage? I can only assume that there is none because the competitive/chauvinistic element of football is missing. Or perhaps it’s because the Egyptians exploited in the Gulf aren’t Naguib Sawiris, and are voiceless in Egypt anyway.

On Wednesday Egypt was beaten by Algeria. It was a shit match, not only because virtually every single member of the Algerian team insists on throwing himself to the ground “in injury” every time an Egyptian player comes near him, but because the Egyptian team was all over the shop. But the match was irrelevant anyway.

Egyptians who attended the playoff in Sudan returned claiming that they were attacked by hordes of Algerian barbarians flown in by the Algerian government expressly for the purpose of terrorizing them with knives and violence.

Things I find astonishing about this and other developments since:

1. This is a football match being played out against an ongoing feud which began in 1989 and was revived only very recently in Egypt’s defeat of Algeria in Cairo. Violence and football are not strangers. Sudan anticipated violence. It deployed approximately 15,000 soldiers. The international media termed it a “revenge match”. Egyptian fans were apparently the only party “shocked” at the possibility and reality of violence.

2. The On TV channel this morning broadcast half an hour of interviews with Egyptian supporters in Cairo Aiport coming from Sudan, who described scenes of “hell” and “war” and savage attacks by Algerian fans. No Algerians were interviewed. No Sudanese eyewitnesses were interviewed.

3. No videos of these alleged attacks have since appeared despite tens of thousands of Egyptians and their mobile phones flying to Sudan. A video of young men brandishing knives has appeared on Youtube. They are not wearing Algerian team colours. There is nothing to prove where and when this was shot.

4. Nobody has doubted the credibility of claims that Egyptian buses carrying fans were attacked by Algerian fans, while the fact that the Algerian national team necessarily trashed its own bus is not open to debate and a matter of logic.

5. The Egyptian media has entirely failed in its responsibility of uncovering the truth. Truth (where it exists) is composite, and is usually discovered by speaking to people who refute the conclusion you already have in your head when you set out to discover the truth.

6. No distinction is being made between Algeria, football, the Algerian government and the Algerian people. Algeria el sha3b [the people] is now a blow up plastic devil with oxygen supplied by the Egyptian media. As I write this, an Egyptian actress is on a Dream TV talk show telling us that 3,000 Algerian criminals were released from prison and flown to Sudan expressly for the purpose of terrorizing Egyptian fans. She has not provided any evidence for this claim. The presenter has not asked for any.

7. Egypt has recalled its ambassador to Algeria because of the treatment of Egyptians at the hands of Algerians. Apparently, only Egyptians have the right to mistreat other Egyptians.

Samia who cleans my flat and I had a huge argument today about all this. She has concluded that “there’s something not right about Algerians”. I asked her why the Egyptian media has decided not to interview Algerians, to get the other side of the story. She suggested that no Algerian would consent to be interviewed by the Egyptian media, and then repeatedly muttered 7asby Allah we na3m el wakeel under her breath as fans described their experiences on On Tv.

Bread & Butter VIII

Ragai (left) with wunderbar lawyer Mohamed Abdel Aziz

Here's some good news for a change. A copper sentenced to five years after a horrible attack on a man in a police station.

ALEXANDRIA: Relatives of a mentally disabled man who was brutally assaulted in a police station last year were relieved on Saturday after offending police colonel Akram Suleiman was found guilty and slapped a five-year jail sentence.

“This is really great. Thank God. I’m so happy,” Ilhamy Sultan, the brother of Ragai Sultan told Daily News Egypt.

“I really didn’t expect that Suleiman would receive such a heavy sentence … I was confident that he’d be found guilty but thought that he’d be given a two- or three-year sentence at most.

“The court really understood what Ragai went through.”

A juvenile crime squad led by Suleiman arrested Ragai Sultan on the evening of July 22, 2008, as he walked on Alexandria’s Corniche.

His brother eventually found him the next day — after he has filed a missing person report — unconscious in a hospital.

Ragai, who had been dumped at the hospital and registered under the name ‘citizen,’ spent three days in intensive care after suffering a broken rib and shoulder, a fracture in the neck and brain hemorrhage that necessitated surgery.

Suleiman was found guilty of three crimes: misuse of force, possession of an illegal weapon and causing permanent disability.

The first offence carries a maximum sentence of three years while defendants found guilty of the second offence face a maximum of one year’s imprisonment.

The maximum sentence handed down in cases of causing permanent disability is seven years. The sentence is calculated according to the seriousness of the disability caused.

Suleiman’s defense lawyers alleged that Ragai — who is nearly 40 — was targeted by a juvenile crime squad because at the time of his arrest he was accompanied by a teenage girl called Passant, who he planned to engage in sexual relations with for money.

The defense maintained throughout the three-month trial that Ragai’s injuries had been caused by him falling down a flight of stairs while attempting to flee the police.

Forensic doctor Karam Shehata categorically repudiated this defense in October when he told the court that Ragai’s head injuries could only have been caused by being struck with a blunt object.

During Saturday’s court session, Suleiman’s lawyers changed tack and attempted to undermine the credibility of the forensic report. They claimed that Shehata did not examine Ragai and said that the fact that the CT scan carried out on Ragai was not accompanied by a report is irregular.

They also maintained that injuries of the gravity sustained by Ragai could be caused “by someone falling over on a beach while playing tennis”.

Doctors from Al Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Violence who attended the trial said that these medical claims were simply “false.”

Mostafa Hussein, a psychiatrist with the Nadeem Center, told Daily News Egypt that CT scans are not usually accompanied by a report printed on the CT film itself, as the defense claimed.

He added that while falls may lead to concussion or a brain hemorrhage, this is only the case where the fall is from “a considerable height” or if the person has a pre-existing malformation in the brain’s blood vessels, “which is not the case with Ragai.”

Two prosecution witnesses, who were held in the Alexandria Security Directorate at the same time as Ragai, appeared during Saturday’s trial, and gave conflicting accounts of what happened.

Both, however, concurred that a junior policeman called Mohamed was responsible for Ragai’s injuries.

Ragai had initially told his brother that the person responsible for his assault was called Mohamed, but changed this account eight months later when, Ilhamy says, his memory returned and he identified Suleiman as his assailant.

Defense lawyers argued that the fact that Ragai changed his account indicates “Akram is an innocent scapegoat.”

Lawyers who had lodged, and won, a claim for LE 10,001 compensation for Ragai’s injuries expressed surprise at Suleiman’s “shambolic” defense team throughout the trial.

During Saturday’s session Suleiman appeared in the dock wearing sunglasses and at points appeared to be crying.

At the conclusion of the defense team’s pleadings, he shouted out from the dock in tears, “Why am I here? Why has nobody listened to me? I’m being tortured in the newspapers and on websites. Why would I hit him? What is there between us that I would hit him?”

Defense lawyer Gamal El-Swede also focused on this angle during his defense pleadings.

He acknowledged that incidents of police violence and brutality do occur, but added, “members of the police only hit people in order to extract confessions.”

While complaints about police brutality are common, few police officers are held to account for such incidents.

Suleiman’s sentencing is roughly the sixth conviction of a police officer for brutality since 2007.

The heaviest sentence was handed down in November 2007 to a police officer and two policemen, each sentenced to seven years imprisonment, after they were found guilty of killing Nasr Ahmed Abdallah.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the Nadeem Center said that Suleiman’s sentence is “one of the heaviest sentences ever handed down by the Egyptian judiciary in a torture case.”

The Gamal Show

The Gamal Show aired online tonight, and I watched it live with loads of people on Twitter. Was fun.

The Gamal Show is Gamal Mubarak’s attempt to convince us that he’s Barack Obama. He appears in a studio with a load of hand-picked young people in a “dialogue”, on this occasion moderated by Lamis El-Hadidy, a television presenter married to Amr Adeeb, brother of Emad Adeeb, head of the executive board of newspaper Nahdet Misr, which recently published a story in which it stated that all Egyptian Bedouins (except direct descendents of the Prophet Mohamed) are criminals.

Lamis wore an odd waistcoat affair that looked like the back was made out of a flak jacket. Gamal didn’t wear a flak jacket because he is protected from flak, because his audience was handpicked and as far as I know he doesn’t meet real people outside studios and controlled public appearances and dinner time with Khadiga.

During tonight’s Gamal Show Gamal was joined by trade minister Rashid Mohamed Rashid, so that he didn’t have to talk as much as on other shows.

Gamal’s hairline and Rashid’s face for some reason remind me of Tunisian president Zeineddin Bin Ali, who in a twist of fate is busily writing himself into another five years of history tonight.

(Aside: Rashid’s Wikipedia page tells us that he went to Stanford, Harvard and MIT, and only acquired Diplomas from each establishment).

The point of the Gamal Show tonight was to impress upon us the importance of a free market economy and the wondrous good being worked by the private sector and private companies who are selflessly and beneficently shouldering the task of providing all the services that Egypt’s failed state can’t, like vocational job training and practical skills.

Gamal, who - God help us - manages to combine looking scary with a complete lack of charisma stressed the importance of reforming the Egyptian education system and, predictably, suggested that this should be done by making teaching a vocation rather than merely a government position.

In government terms this translates into making pay rises for teachers conditional on their passing tests which mostly examine very little to do with what they teach.

As expected, there were several comedy moments during tonight’s Gamal Show:

1. Almost all the young men had been given identical striped ties of the type favoured by Republicans, making them look like a giant Mormon boy band.

2. The questions were farcical, and determinedly and deliberately skirted round ills of Egyptian society using one of the following methods:

Model A

Audience member: I am a victim of [insert minor ill of society, such as unemployment]

Rashid Ben Ali/Lamis El Flak Jacket: Are you still a student?

Audient member: Yes

Rashid Ben Al/Lamis El Flak Jacket: You lack experience and your contribution must therefore be ignored.

Model B

Audience member: I am a victim of [insert minor ill of society, such as unemployment]

Rashid Ben Ali/Gamal: You must immediately open your own business. This will solve everything.

Model C

Audience member: There are no minor ills of society, such as unemployment and people who say so are lazy liars.

Lamis El-Flak Jacket: Bravo. Next question.

3. A contribution from Wahid Ramadan Mohamed, manager of a Macaroni factory. A carbohydrate Willy Wonka.
4. Gamal’s observation that “Egyptians as a general rule don’t like to move from the place they’re born in” – such as the presidency of Egypt perhaps?
5. This series of exchanges:

Exchange 1

Audience member: There is no wosta [use of high-up connections to obtain benefits one wouldn’t otherwise get such as a job, or special treatment] in Egypt.

Lamis El-Flak Jacket: Bravo, that’s right. Next question.

Immediately afterwards.

Exchange 2

Audience member: I wanted to open my business but was unable to get the necessary licence.

Lamis El Flak-Jacket: What? Really? We’ll call the governor for you immediately and sort it out.

Gamal making change

6. Lamis El-Flak Jacket towards the end of the programme telling audience members to get to the point with their questions cos time was running out and apologizing for being ‘dictatorial’ quote unquote. At least she apologises for it, unlike the father of a certain 40-something year old former banker who wasn’t a million miles away from her.

I was surprised to discover that Gamal really does seem to believe all the nonsense he spouts about foreign investment and a strong private sector and a pulling back of the state being the answer to Egypt’s problems, despite much of the evidence pointing to the contrary.

I was unsurprised to discover that he did not have the decency to make any reference to the tens of people who died yesterday night when a train went into the back of another train. But then it only involved Egypt’s poorest, the people who are hopelessly shut out of Gamal’s grand plans for the expansion of the private sector and whittling down of state services, and who are ploughed down daily again and again and again by his government’s merciless schemes.

*Screenshots by Moftases

CAIRO AIRPORT DENIED ENTRY INTO CAIRO AIRPORT

The whereabouts of these plastic chairs is currently unknown

CAIRO: The fate of around 400 plastic chairs, two duty free sections and various other permanent fixtures remained unknown yesterday after Cairo Airport was denied entry into Cairo Airport.

“It happened at around midnight,” an ashtray who wished to remain anonymous said.

“I was approached by a uniformed officer while someone was putting their cigarette out in me. The officer told me that ‘my name is in their system’ before I was taken into a small room filled with people some of whom I recognized. The officer also took the man who was putting his cigarette out.”

Speaking from Paris Asuit Case described his experiences.

“I arrived in Cairo exhausted after 8 hours in transit in Paris. Just before I was about to be put on the luggage belt two officers instructed the luggage handlers to put me down. I was then questioned for two hours about whether I have ever carried arms into Gaza,”

“They eventually put me on a flight back to Paris.”

While journalists were not allowed to approach the site of the Cairo Airport terminal, a mobile phone image smuggled out by an airport worker revealed that the once busy terminals now stand empty.

The assiduous security operation has left no stone unturned. Pen Birolund, a Swedish writing device explained what had happened to him.

“I was stopped just before going through passport control. I was told that that have my name on their computer and they took me into a side room where some police officers asked me whether I planned to lead a strikes and protests in Cairo and declare myself president. I saw Boeing 747s, luggage belts, and soap dispensers being held in airport detention, all waiting to be deported.”

While Interior Minister Beloved Le Juste has not publicly commented on the campaign, a security officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the operation – informally known as Operation Stop Wael Abbas – was a security operation aimed at getting to the core of “insurgent” activity in Egypt.

“There exists a minority in Egypt who wish to undermine Egypt’s stability by organizing marches in the countryside involving 14 people and writing about events which actually do happen and calling it news when it is merely a smear campaign,” the official said.

“We have discovered that these people communicate with people outside Egypt using something called Twitter, which is a top secret communication device similar to Morse Code.”

The official revealed that security bodies successfully infiltrated Twitter, by creating a Twitter alias and following people.

“This was an extremely complicated operation which involved signing up for Twitter. Computer specialists were called in for the task. Once we identified that Egyptian insurgents are communicating with outside elements we decided to tackle the problem at its root by banning Cairo Airport altogether. It is well known that Cairo Airport's plastic chairs provide support to these enemy elements.”

The official said that the authorities plan to build a giant moat around the perimeter of Egypt which he says will “stop false rumours entering the nation”.

He added that a leading Egyptian scientist is currently working on creating a giant roof modeled on the roof used on Wimbledon’s central tennis court which will cover Egypt’s airspace and serve the same function of “keeping out elements which seek to destabilise the country”.

It should be noted that Nobel-prize winning scientist Ahmed Zoweil has not been seen since his family reported him missing last month.