The Future Has Begun

On January 22, 2016January 23, 2016 By davb.deIn Egypt5 Comments

Critics claim that Egypt is bare of freedom. Hence a lot of NGO’s and think tanks have put their effort into (I’m slightly exaggerating) a ‘failed state’ narrative, leading to, that Egypt has been officially categorized as “autocracy/restricted democracy”.

Critics invoke spinsters from the old past -“Egypt’s state institutions, the oldest in the world, and its political culture, have little tradition of respecting civil liberties. Some periods have been worse than others – the worst was actually under Gamal Abdel-Nasser in the 1950s and ’60s, when many thousands of political prisoners were sent “behind the sun” to camps in the Western Desert.” – and the newer past under Mubarak, when the attempt to rid the public space from radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood who invoked terror had lead the security forces of the Mubarak government to crack down hard against radical Islamists.

On the foreign media surface, the general mood in Egypt looks like one of a country, that yearns to be liberated into a western-democracy. January 25th 2011, the onset of the Arab Spring in Egypt, had, in my opinion, been planned as an ambitious foreign policy project, fostered by Western governments.

Though the Egyptians could save themselves from the fate of its neighbor countries, ‘the Arab spring’ has chosen to sow the seeds of democracy in the oldest nation. Regretfully few take note of the changes already achieved, the process, which had been initiated by president El-Sisi, to whom most foreign media and local activists openly or secretly relate to as a ‘dictator’ has brought substantial results. Now, with a parliament in place, we might hopefully soon witness a society of participating citizens.

Everyone agrees it still is a very long way to go, until the spirit for a self-determined life in freedom paired with communal obligations can reach out to a majority of people. For now, one will see a more or less disillusioned population, with almost everyone suffering under the economic consequences of a failed Muslim Brotherhood regime. Most activists and think-tankers are suggesting, that neither social justice nor progress can ever be expected under the current leadership.

An article in a local paper, reflecting opposing views, headlines: “The way issues are being run in Egypt today reminds me of the atmosphere before the 25 of January revolution.” –

Is that really so?

There can be no social justice, progress and building democratic institutions without a solid source of state income and thriving private entrepreneurship. While this is a truism, the expectation in most Egyptian citizens for instant cure of social ills and instant remedy of justified grievances has been a reality ever since 2011.

While president El-Sisi receives a – comparatively speaking – modest salary, of which he donates half to the ‘Long live Egypt’ fund [launched in October 2014 by some businessmen, headed by a former Central Bank governor to finance urgent projects], every post-revolution government has raised the wages of public servants and employees. For a considerable number of recipients, civil servants add up to about seven Million people, the, nominally low salaries, had been increased three times. This, together with the minimum salary debates, has shifted the whole issue of wages payment and expectations further out of touch with work-productivity. But it has prompted the self-understanding, that offering pre-revolutionary salaries in a private sector job would get you flabbergasted reactions. When El-Sisi started his tenure, one of his first concerns had been to curb this spiral of increasing prices, part of which were owed to raised costs for commodities, the bigger part of the ever up-climbing price-spiral were self-inflicted.

There is hardly any criticism, which wouldn’t take the chance these days to polemicize [quoting an opposition mainstream sentiment] that “The word revolution implies a profound change in social and political structures, which did not happen.” – A popular slam as well is to point out ‘the futility’ of Egypt’s biggest, already accomplished, national project, the extension of the Suez-Canal, cheering maliciously once revenues fall short of expectations .

The historical economical baggage, Egypt is burdened with, goes back to the times of Gamal Abdel Nasser. He failed to care for a flourishing agriculture, the fundament of growth for various industries. While his post-revolution Egyptian Land Reform was an effort to change land ownership practices in Egypt following the 1952 Revolution, the effects of this land reform drew to a halt as the population of Egypt moved away from agriculture.

As it holds still true ‘food is more essential for life than are the services provided by merchants or bankers or factories, an economy cannot shift to such activities unless food is available for barter or sale in sufficient quantities to support those engaged in them’, El-Sisi has given significant priority to develop agriculture.

Shortly after president El-Sisi has taken office, developing infrastructure and agriculture are on the national development priority list.

The projects discussed after he took office and during the investment summit in March 2015 are being translated into action.

China, Germany, Saudi-Arabia, Russia and the United Arab Emirates [alphabetical order] lead the long list of countries with companies, who have signed for substantial investment in Egypt.

On December 30th, the plan for the reclamation of 1.5 million feddans of desert land was ‘formally initiated, with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announcing the commencement of the first phase of this latest mega-project‘, due to be completed within two years. The idea is, that small farmers and big investors alike are to be sold plots of land throughout this project – in which owners may purchase expansive tracts of lands, with the state-administered Egyptian Rural Development Company supervising both: sale and distribution of desert lands designated for reclamation. – Given that completion of the second branch of the Suez Canal extension had been initially set for three years, yet it has been operational after only one year, one could assume, this – widely criticized undertaking too will run on schedule.

Where are we now?

The Prime Ministers’ headline from a local paper a couple of days ago read “Egypt needs 6% growth for the people to feel the effects” doesn’t seem to predict economic relief – given, that nearly none of the average citizen is without financial strain but with a considerable number of people in merely upgraded from agonizing to precarious circumstances and with his GDP growth expectation at 5%.

President El-Sisi has said it before the presidential elections and after he had been inaugurated into office: “Don’t expect the economical situation in Egypt to improve before two years”

The overwhelming solidarity, with which Egyptian citizens financed the Suez-Canal project through state-certificates, lead me to hope that Sisi’s call ‘People! Roll-up-your-sleeves!’ would trigger wide-spread initiatives. Instead I came to realize, that more than sixty years in varying degrees of suppressive governance has formed a nation, in which only the most energetic individuals find their way to the surface of an otherwise cumbersome work population.

It is in this context that I estimate the necessity of the Presidential Leadership Program, launched in October 2015. While the PLP – acquiring skills in governance, administrative & political fields but most importantly in critical, analytical thinking – addresses already only ‘the fittest’, it is meant to reach out to those, who need peer role-models to understand about their own capacities, since the most noble goal of the program is to empower the youth, who feels – in big parts – left out, as the yet unreformed public education sector and a staggering youth unemployment rate of ~ 27% has created, what most describe as a ‘cultural gap’.

In the meantime administrative bodies work towards the future.

To address but one issue: Egypt went through its worst energy crisis in decades starting in 2012, with power cuts common as its ageing state-run infrastructure struggles to handle rapidly growing demand for electricity in a country of now 90 million people. Siemens got its biggest single contract ever and is one key partner in developing gas-fired power plants and wind power installations that will boost Egypt’s power generation capacity by more than 50 percent compared to the currently installed base. The big power plants are scheduled to generate electricity as of summer 2017; to bridge peak demand in the summer of 2016 Siemens will help refurbish old steam turbines and there will be an installation of distributed generation units to deliver additional power generation capacity on short notice close to locations where demand is the highest.

A lot of pragmatism with aggressive schedules define the overall working-atmosphere in Egypt’s executives floors. Naturally, all individuals, involved in or working for those projects get their share of pressure. There, the notorious Egyptian work ethos, grown under Nasser’s socialism, which had been summarized as ‘Bokra, in sh’allah, malesh’ [tomorrow, God willing, don’t worry’] seems like light years away.

I still hope that the steam of that pressure-pot will spread throughout the country a bit faster and productivity will be as self-understanding and providing adequate compensation.

Democracy & Freedom is not only bought with a great price, but it is maintained by unremitting effort.~

Water does not flow through the same riverbed twice

On February 15, 2014February 15, 2014 By davb.deIn Egypt, The Evolving Revolution2 Comments

Egypt is in a transition. A rough one. A unique one.-

On the surface we have a battle between people fighting for outgrown concepts among opposition forces and a decisive army of people equipped with a highly entrepreneurial frame of mind to safe Egypt from the claws of Islamic fundamentalists.

I wish reporters and activists would care more for objectivity. From friends who I find trustworthy I hear that some stories are made up, facts twisted, insignificant occurrences blown up to major violations or misdemeanors, depending on the perspective. One reads a lot about torture these days.

I don’t know what and whom to believe.

In the headlines one will find reports about security forces who get shot while protecting Churches or while fighting for Egypt’s national safety, which is mostly jeopardized at its boarders through rebellious, unstable neighbor collaborators who infiltrate the country with weapons and jihadists in continuous effort to support what had begun already a couple of months ago, when “In fact, the Brotherhood had taken measures to bring back, arm and organize thousands of “mujahedeen” and release convicted terrorists from prison throughout the previous months, to use them exactly for this purpose should the Brotherhood fail to control the Egyptian state.” (4)

While individuals have the liberty to handle their private information to their own sense of what they wish their social environment to know, coping with the consequences of having disclosed their private affairs to a person neither willing nor capable of helpful and supportive sympathy or both, governments have national consequences to consider.

‘With respect to governmental information, any government may distinguish which materials are public or protected from disclosure to the public based on classification of information as sensitive, classified or secret and being otherwise protected from disclosure due to relevance of the information to protecting the national interest.’(1)

While ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers”(1) I wonder if they could foresee that the media, thought of a corrective force for the state agencies in their founding stage, would become a handy tool of mass-manipulation with an enormous roll-back effect on the governments. Other countries’ governments that is.-

We are living in an era, where the loss of credibility of journalists has become normal, as integrity apparently became a value, buried in the history of humanity and left subjected to interpretation.

On the national level media are self-muzzled since every successful editor-in-chief knows how to mute ambitious journalists or to phrase it more politely: how to make them understand what he is expected to write. In Germany we already speak about the ‘Systempresse’ which can be translated to lobby-press. From the US I hear that opinions, not serving main-stream political interests, share the same fate. In both, Germany and then the US some journalists retire to blogs and private internet-news platforms, being forced away from public mass attention. Free Press – A legally flawless arrangement.

Egypt’s opinion discourse appears overwhelmingly led by those familiar with the benefits of today’s ‘free-world’ and informed about the abstracts of the underlying value-system, however generously overlook the price it came and still comes with. Moreover and more perilously: they don’t seem to pay attention to events beyond Egypt’s borders jeopardizing Egypt’s national security.

I follow some enthusiastic and very dedicated journalists who seem to me blinded by the rainbows of dream world realities.

Inter-dependencies in the parallel Universes of the Egyptian nation where people have developed a concept-of-self independently with essentially antagonistic life-styles over decades play well into the hands of those who have ulterior self serving motives.

What drives Egyptian journalists or activists to raise their voice in support of freeing journalists of a television station [Al-Jezeerah (AJ)], a TV net-work everyone in the Middle East can know for its partisan stance on the Muslim brotherhood? Partisan to the extent that some see AJ as a Muslim brotherhood promotion channel!

As a consequence of AJ’s all too obviously fact-detached covering of Egypt’s transitional phase after June 30^th, giving a very wrong and manipulative impression on ‘events on the ground’, the Egyptian government withdrew AJ’s license to operate. Instead of respecting the decision and fighting in the courts to reestablish their permit, the Qatar based management of AJ decided to have their staff remained in Egypt where they took residence in several rooms of a well known 5 star hotel. In late December 2013 the journalists got arrested. While the photographer has been released in the meantime, we see solidarity calls, locally and internationally, demanding the release of the detained journalists.

Is the question still allowed: why did the journalists not retire from a news-network that had never for a moment considered to take the chance and try to apologize for biased coverage to ‘maintain their integrity’ [as they claim to have] once there had been no doubt about the net-works propagandistic character?

A lot has changed in the past decades but life is still riding on choices. I can’t think of any media outlet or publication that can afford to oppose the ‘shareholders expectations’. The press/media have become a business like any other. – However: would journalists have had withstood the temptation of ‘soft corruption’ and resigned.. it might not have come to this.

Friday January 24^th had been a day when I wished for a cancellation of the governmental promoted festive demonstration to celebrate January 25^th, the day that initiated the Egyptian ‘Arab-spring’ revolution: three bomb attacks in random places throughout the day.

January 25^th has become a very emotional day. Protagonists from different camps accusing each other for ‘stealing the revolution’, demonstrations, though almost marginalized, and random terror attacks with daily reports on shot police officers hinder the onset of reviving economical activities and contribute to a crawling nationwide depression.

I came across an article where a journalist was trying to “interviewing the ‘Bride of Sisi’, as she called herself, when a crowd gathered around her [me] and another journalist and accused them [us] of working for a ‘terrorist’ news channel” [Al Jezeerah] A curious chant at Tahrir on January 25^th had been: “Where’s Al Jazeera? We are the Egyptian people!” Thousands of Egyptians headed to Tahrir that day despite bomb threats announced from the Sinai based Ansar Bayt al Maqdis, a terror organization that can be linked to Al-Qaeda and the Muslim brotherhood that claims responsibility for the bomb-attacks in Sinai and Egypt’s capital. To protect the citizens who support the course of the interim government, the ‘hot-spots’ had been secured in a way able to defend war-like scenarios. 260.000 security forces and tanks had been deployed all over Egypt.

What has it been like ‘on the grounds’ on January 25^th? – Hundreds, if not more, reported gathered at the Journalists Syndicate chanting against what they call the ‘military rule’. This lead to clashes in the perimeter of the Journalist Syndicate march and on near by 6 October bridge where an APC came and shot two teargas canisters in front of the Press Syndicate causing protestors to run in different directions. ‘Still marching on October bridge, road is not blocked, chants saying ‘Sisi is like Bashar’’. Birdshots by CSF towards protesters, a clash is in the making, around 400 protesters.. while in the meantime confirmation of ‘massive explosion’ in Suez had been reported with news of targeting Security Forces center. Later anti-government militants fired an Rocket Propelled Grenade at a Central Security Forces (CSF) camp in Suez and then opened heavy fire on the camp.. As a Russian official sees the terrorist acts: ‘Cairo bombings is Brotherhood’s response on new constitution and their continuous loss of followers and supporters.’(3) Meanwhile at least 6 people got arrested at Maadi metro station after “opening fire on police officers.” You heard people say: Egypt now has two variants of totalitarians: pro-Sisi and pro-Morsi. They are now fighting each other over the “right” to oppress the rest.‘All journalists please very careful. Mobs attacking journalists (even Egyptians) accusing them of being part of Al-Jazeera.’

What a day!

Weekends nowadays usually start with the announcement of tight security measurements to protect citizens from pro-Morsi protesters’ violence and end with a report of the number of protesters arrested, wounded or shot, oftentimes weapons secured and/or terror-cells detected.

January 25^th 2011 has given Egypt an open political opposition. Now we have several groups who compete with each other and aggressively against the state, whereby it should be noted, that mainly the Muslim brotherhood sympathizers still cling to aggressive and violent opposition, still hoping Morsi can be reinstated.

While more differentiated Western observers can understand that the authorities show no hesitation to lock up remnants of the brotherhood regime during demonstrations, they do feel uneasy when the same happens to members of what they think of as ‘revolutionary stratum’, like socialists, activists and utopists.

‘For the uninitiated, Egypt‘s streets are split between pro-Morsi, pro-Sisi and pro-democracy activists today, each laying claim to the 2011 revolution.’ – ‘Nope – this is misinformation- it’s anti-Morsi 90%, MB 10% and of the 90% anti Morsi 80% pro-Sisi & 20% anti-Sisi. Game over?’(2)

“When the people find they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic“ said Benjamin Franklin. Money support had been the basis of pro Morsi support all along!- These days speculations about Qatar based and/or exiled brotherhood members circulate, rumoring about excessive funding to boost up the shrinking number of demonstrators and demonstrations since the window of opportunity might close shortly.

Getting hooked and adhering to a naïve narrative that is comfortable from a Western point of view at the expense of reality will leave the distant observer firstly with false sense of understanding for a genuine political process and eventually inept to mentally prepare himself for similar scenarios, which are looming all over the world, taking shape already in Ukraine, Thailand, South-America, and Turkey as one can observe.

As for the secular Egyptian opposition: There is a point of time when bringing forward clearly phrased goals is essential to ensure they can be included in the ongoing process. Opposition should be productive and can only be supportive if it comes with addressable aims.- They still owe Egypt a concept.

It is true. The stern state imprisons everyone ‘who asks for it’ and comes in their grip, once they are close to a demonstration, trying to mute the zombie-like call to ‘Let the revolution erupt all over! Let it express our anger towards the fascist regime!’

I remember how I myself recently thought Egypt might be heading toward ‘McCarthyism’. – A young friendly chap who stopped joining the pro-Morsi protests a couple of months ago made this thought vanish. He is sharing a flat with active pro-Morsi student-colleagues, one of whom had been arrested during a Friday protest; being worried about his own safety I found myself surprised to still find him walking free, even after he went to visit his arrested friend in prison. According to the logic I find in news-papers and social media, he ‘should’ have been arrested by now.. – I spoke with him yesterday. He wishes for Morsi to come back. But he as well is able to acknowledge that the majority of the people currently does not support this.-

Naturally this rough system of ‘justice’ turns away many sympathizers who initially gave their full support to the interim-state. – Naturally people walk away, once circumstances get complicated and develop beyond their capacity. – Naturally men who march through life to the rhythms of a drum have no ear for the whisper of a serenade.

‘Are the Egyptians edging at a profound crisis of conscious, questioning their identity?’ – Yes of course! Is that not to be expected given the circumstances??

While the official US still supports the Muslim brotherhood, as their speaker in a recent Q&A underlines with think-tanks still strongly recommending ‘dialogue & discussion with Muslim brotherhood members’ in order to avoid “exacerbate persistent instability” giving ‘inclusivity’ the bitter taste of distortion, Egyptian columnist Wael Nawara delivered a convincing counter thesis, showing that the ‘able’ think tanks didn’t even glance on the map of the Middle East and Egypt’s neighbors. “The idea of granting terrorists, or their allies, control of a country like Egypt, with the rest of the Middle East to follow, in an attempt to pacify them is like giving your arm to a shark hoping it will spare the rest of your body. .. The interim government in Egypt could be accused of many things. But the explosive belt around Egypt of countries collapsing and failing under Islamist militant attacks is not something of its own doing. If this or future governments manage to hold on to Egypt and cause that wave of anarcho-Islamist terrorists to be reversed, it should be applauded and supported. The United States may have seen a glimpse of terrorism horrors in 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan. But adding a failed Egypt to the equation would change everything. Egypt has often been the first piece triggering the start of that domino effect in all directions. After all, in the middle of the Middle East’s map lies Egypt.”(4)

The future however seems to have already started to take shape following the dynamics of the past months. While the official US still rants at Egypt in their habitually imperial manner, Russian President Vladimir Putin seized the opportunity and secured Russia a new and important ally. Meanwhile Minister of Defense & Deputy Prime Minister Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi together with Minister of Foreign Affairs Nabil Fahmy went to Moscow and started to discuss military and technical cooperation between the two countries on a 2+2 scheme. It looks like that Russia and Egypt are having promising prospects for cooperation in large-scale projects.

As an Egyptian friend pointed out: ‘The great advantage Russia has over America is that it doesn’t have “think thanks” but functioning brains for its policies.’

‘Our task is not to fix the blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future.’ Continue reading “Water does not flow through the same riverbed twice” →

“Integrity is the Ability to Stand by an Idea”

On January 12, 2014January 14, 2014 By davb.deIn Egypt2 Comments

Continue reading ““Integrity is the Ability to Stand by an Idea”” →

To Whose Benefit?

On December 25, 2013January 2, 2014 By davb.deIn EgyptLeave a comment

Last night’s bomb-attack in the city of Mansura, aimed at the provincial’s capital police head-quarters is said to have been an act of retribution. ‘Islamist extremists sought to revenge their ‘martyrs’ from the sit-in dispersals in August this year’ suggested the twitter-timeline. For the ‘informed public’ was clear: “the Muslim Brotherhood is behind this”.-

Now from inside Mansura one can hear voices from political parties, suggesting that the heinous act, factually leaving more than 13 people dead and about 150 wounded, most of whom reportedly belong to the police-forces, had been ‘orchestrated’, since the premises on which the car, allegedly carrying the bomb, parked, couldn’t possibly have been brought there, as the street had been blocked for a while, ‘this must be an inside job’.

Apart from the agony, the partly gruesomely wounded victims are suffering, and apart from the grief of the bereaved: what would be the benefit of inventing and carrying out such an insidious atrocity?

The Ministry of Interior surely has a lot to cope with. And they sure will have a lot to explain in the near future.

When the demonstration-law succeeded the abrogation of the state-of-emergency in mid November, the interim government unintentionally opened a second demonstration-front. The old activists came back to the streets and gained ‘glory’ in the local and foreign headlines in protesting this law, which lead to their and other protestors detention resulting into trials for inciting violence e.a.- A typical headline read “Egypt jails symbols of 2011 uprising”, and as almost to be expected: the EU immediately communicated a statement ‘demanding the verdict to be revised’. Is the interim government committing acts of self-sabotage? – It is irritating that the court-sentence for one of the most prominent activists, who stood as well in the forefront on June 30th, received a hard to believe 3 years prison sentence. I can find this only very exaggerated.

Like a sympathetic amount of anarchy, I take exaggeration as an Egyptian streak. Moreover I’m coming to think ‘Egyptians’ love simplifications and have a strong tendency to despise opinions which are not in full swing with their favorite conspiracy-theories. You can hear sentences like ‘Egypt has been plagued by a bunch of activists who choose to collaborate with MB & terrorists under the pretext of confronting the military.’ Like most of what happens around ‘the state and the opposition’: it causes a constant stupefying dumbness in the conciliatory mind and leads eventually to an adjustment of measure. –

Demonstrations to protest the detention of members of the Muslim brothers, especially their leaders and explicitly ex-short-lived-president Mohamed Morsi have been centered on students, loyal to the Muslim brotherhood. Now the ‘law of retribution’ created another chain of protests against the protest-law and for the release of the detainees who are imprisoned because they protested that law and additional protest in solidarity with jailbirds from the opposition-camp, who had been released in the meantime since their lobby, the HRO’s had put enough pressure on the case.

In the boiling heat of one such protest when already bird-shot-guns were employed, a student, Mohamed Reda, got shot while – accounts differ – ‘he was heading to the administration of the prestigious, governmental, and religiously unaffiliated Cairo University, to get some paper-work done’. The shot had allegedly been fired by security forces. He died. Mohamed Reda became a reason for uneasiness in the ‘middle-class’ citizens spectrum, and a reason for further retribution-demonstrations among activists. Democracy-Meter showed: 511 student protests alone in November; I suppose that’s why the demonstration law had been imposed in the first place.

Yesterday the unfortunate death of a revolutionary Youth had been bemoaned, and went viral on social media: ‘The Egyptian revolution is embodied in Basem Mohsen: he lost an eye in clashes with police in 2011, was beaten by the Brotherhood in 2012 and finally shot in the head in 2013’ (by the interim government’s security forces during a protest). He was 19 years old when he joined the revolution in January 25th, unafraid and always to be found in the forefront.

Aversion against ‘state brutality’ has started to penetrate the layer of the ‘original’ revolutionary stratum.

No wonder.

In the meantime the constitution was almost finished. Among other disappointments it is becoming clear that still civilians could be put on trial by military courts. One key-demand of the Jan25th revolutionaries has been that military trials for civilians must be abolished.

I find it worth considering that writing a constitution in this counterproductive and willfully distorting atmosphere is everything else but contributive to maintaining an elevated frame of mind. So when Amr Moussa, the head of the Constituent Committee openly declared and explained that a constitution must not be regarded as an eternal script but rather a draft which will be adjusted over the years in the process of politics and in accordance with the societal needs, ‘things’ fell back into place for me.-

I strongly believe that fighting for civil-rights is a duty of every able citizen, once the goal is at least feasible, meaning: if there is a comparatively fair prospect of success; otherwise it’s a waste of energy that could be utilized for more productive activities leading to achieve that goal. – What would you need civil-rights for if there are no civilians left? Let’s not forget: Egypt was at the verge of a civil war just in June this year. It is becoming clearer every day that evil forces, commonly referred to as terrorist, seek to undermine a successful nation-building through directing and strengthening malicious activities with every support they can get.. – I’d find it difficult to continue my work sitting at the desk while knowing someone is trying to constantly set my house on fire. Terrorist attacks and assaults, as horrifying as they are, must be confronted and counteracted since it doesn’t look like they’d just vanish through ‘peace as the result of trade’.

Back to Mansura. Why would a government that is already under scrutiny and in dire need to proof itself and put economic plans into action, sabotage itself even more with orchestrating a major terror-attack on its very own personnel?

Assumed, like both major opposition camps have it: the ‘military junta’ orchestrated Mansura to gain the upper hand and make the politically unaware citizens surrender to their wisdom, thus accepting each and every security measure in humble gratefulness. That would presumably lead to the police state and military dictatorship, which some claim we already have. – But how? The police officers will still be the same. The army might have a bit more powers to act with, but for doing what exactly? Who would win?

Everybody knows that a state can only prevail with a certain but crucial number of ‘happy’ individuals. Happiness today and in this context means but gaining one asset: money. How many corrupted citizens does it take to present an embellished and misleading picture about Egypt? A few ten thousands, I reckon. They’d all would want their share of the cake. And now comes the point where the theory sucks. The cake can only be shared if taken off the shelf.

To see what the cake contains, one should look at what the second-revolution-wave, the one after June 30th, represented through the interim-government, already accomplished.

Next to all the already known gigantic, big, medium and small enterprises related to the Gulf countries, the World Bank, the States, the EU and other countries which the interim government succeeded to initiate or revitalize since July 3^rd of this year, new projects aiming at internal/local entrepreneurship, are giving reasons for high hopes.

A new focus on Upper Egypt might even lead, evolutionary though, to a moderate kind of decentralization. For the first time in decades, infrastructural and housing problems are going to be solved big-scale in public-private partnerships.

The earnestness with which the call for increase in productive investment is being brought forward in various boards, plus the transparency standards imposed on multi-national-companies to be able to supervise their widely ramified business activities, leaves not awfully much space for ‘human weakness’, namely corruption.-

The syndicate of medical doctors, under the thump of the Muslim brotherhood, always males, for decades is now presided over by a woman, who is a well known Jan25 activist and renowned for her political ambitions and integrity.

This gives me reason to believe that sustainable change is paving the way in Egypt.

The constitution is ready to be voted for or against in a referendum, due by January 14/15th.- Despite the draft is already being slammed as lacking progressive aspects, one should honor the fact that subtle but significant changes have been adopted, as even Egypt’s ‘chief’ human rights representative concedes.

Under the given circumstances namely: the part of the public debate lead by leftists, who are focusing on elaborating on the multitude of shortcomings of the government while having obviously sworn an oath on banning to mention achievements from their comments on the current, the old protests and the new demonstrations.. – This government is quite a success!.-

Life goes on for those who understand how to work productively. Life drags on for those who have little space for creative innovation. Life sucks for those who are destined to follow the flow, since the river runs low.

The “anti-coup” – ”all-is-fine” – ”Mubarak-is-back” sentiments simmering the underlying mood in Egypt constitute of course a challenge to society as a whole.

“The military is behaving in a very heavy-handed way, as militaries are wont to do, and has begun to alienate even those sectors of society that have stood behind it so far. 2014 will see increased tensions between military and security forces and Islamist actors. It will also see worsening relations between the military and the secular opposition, especially the youth. Continuing demonstrations and escalating Islamist attacks on military and security targets in the Sinai and elsewhere will make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to address the country’s economic challenges. Egypt is not out of the woods yet.” Not all too agreeable. As a friend from Twitter has put it: all of the remaining Egyptian Islamists would fit into my reception. I don’t see that ‘Egypt’ is caught up in a stand-off with opposing parties, ready to emerge into a mass-revolt anytime soon, as some already suggest.

But it’s not because the Gulf has poured Billions of Dollars into Egypt’s economy that we have nothing to worry about. Businessmen are cautious. “Some private sector Gulf investors have said they would not come back to Egypt without collateral to secure their funds, in response to judicial cases raised against their projects following the 2011 ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak. Egyptian courts issued no less than 11 rulings in business related cases since the 25 January Revolution, which included abolishing several government contracts concluded during Mubarak’s rule. These cases were raised by activists and lawyers, who believed that public companies were sold at low prices. These judgments resulted in legal dilemmas for several foreign companies in Egypt, which would be repellent to investment and threaten the business climate.” – However. Coming they will. ’Cautious optimism’ is justified.

The ‘cake’ at stake can and will be only distributed, when the country succeeds to find a convincing way to make its governance appealing and desirable, not only their front-man, which is widely thought of as going to be General El-Sisi. The power-of-public-consent is already established, since the government has already lost its ‘untouchable’ nimbus.

Egypt is still in the hibernation-mode, economy wise. – The interim government received a lot of credit as well on their trust- account from its friends and allies. The building ‘the world’ expects Egypt to erect has already most building materials at its disposal. The crucial challenge to solve now is: the statics of the building. Even if General El-Sisi would become president, provided he would submit to the pressure of the people and his fellow cabinet-colleagues and announce his candidacy which will – most analysts and Egyptians agree –result into a clear majority-vote, his presence alone would only provide the shape of the building-structure. The statics would have to come from inside.

The Ministry of Interior seems to be the most grief-stricken breach between the people and the government, and it has never been healed. All the trust, the government earned so far from the majority of the Egyptian people goes to the army and – in the noticeable aspects – to the interim-government.

If the Egyptian government succeeded to find a solution to the terror-problem and if the Egyptian activists succeeded to find an appropriate way to bring forward and promote their grievances, the governmental administrations together with new shaping societal movements could focus on tackling the underlying political, economical, and social challenges the people went into the streets for, back then, on January 25th, having a beautiful future.

There are signs that the leaders in Egypt have internalized the need to seriously address the problems at hand.

Adly Mansour, Egypt’s president, has just formed a fact-finding committee and ordered to investigate all the occurrences of violence after June 30^th.- This is revolutionary. It’s still the Middle East. Not very long ago, Egypt had been reigned by aristocrats where nobody was expected to publicly account for anything that could question the whole.. – not because a few thousand Egyptians enjoyed the privilege of a Western education abroad, mostly at very reputable universities, all of Egypt has lost their conservative sense of national identity! Nations are slow to learn..

The question is: will Egyptians support their own cause and eventually sit themselves at the laid table or will they be manipulated into stubborn insistence of an undoable set of priorities and drift into another uprising, from which Egypt certainly won’t recover easily?

In the meantime, having in mind what all happened after the November 13^th and in light of what happened in Mansura last night, I come to believe it would be best to abolish the demonstration-law, reinforce the state-of-emergency with a curfew, Fridays be like other days, and ban demonstrations until the presidential election is over. – As Charles de Gaulle once said: “There is no time to distinguish between the unfortunate and incompetent.”

My conciliatory self prefers to think differently.

Let’s keep in mind: You can’t vote to change the laws of economics. – Egypt is suffering. Some Leftists are already making fun of the governments’ plea to show support and solidarity in combating terrorism. I’m as tired of unproductive comments as I’m tired of protests which embellish featherbrained hooliganism with politics. – May the three days of state-mourning meant to honor the victims of Mansura, bring out the hindsight that retribution leads only to destruction.

Let us reject what we think and accept what we see. Let violence not be a substitute for wits..

“In the end, the treasure of life is missed by those who hold on and gained by those who let go.” Lao-Tse

The Villain, the Hero and the Hypocrite

On November 29, 2013November 30, 2013 By davb.deIn Egypt4 Comments

What is still left of the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that had been adopted by the General assembly of the United Nations, back in 1948, in the aftermath of the barbarianism of World War II? What is still ‘human’ in the Rights Organizations? – Everything. And that is why it is time for those now mostly self-serving ‘bureaus of organized upholders of moral standards’ to take a chance to better themselves. Temporary dissolution would be the noble way to resign from rusty-grown standards, for they deteriorated to a mumbo. But nobility has left men since a long time already. The HRO’s ought to dynamically and circumstantially adjust their action to the situation, while applying sensivity to regional issues. Putting a blind eye to abuse of human rights from the side of self-proclaimed victims, as is partly the case with Muslimbrotherhood in Egypt, is like making the fox guards the hen, is a declaration of ethical bankruptcy. It seems HRO’s factually only randomly live up to honor the rights of their institutionally framed promises. Regretfully, HRO’s grew as well to be associated with pretense and clichés of fundamental values since hardly any action is followed up with consistency to goals. What mostly happens when monstrous violations of human life, contempt of human integrity and defilement of human dignity occurs is a hasty sequence of outcries & condemnations, published through well established media-outlets spread through volunteers and sub-initiatives only to be eventually let at the mercy of their dreadful fate, once the immediate hype is over. – And the just & proper human beings of the world follow. Like fishes in an aquarium: you put some flakes at the surface of the water and ‘all’ fishes swarm up to regale themselves with fresh flake/news-spread. Once the ‘action-part’ is over, the tents are being decamped, the posters and flags being packed; for the big names then it’s time to celebrate themselves most probably in a lounge of a posh hotel, for the small guys: to rest in the comfortable feeling of their moral superiority. The victims of grave threats, the really affected and gruesomely suffering human beings, people in war-zones, are waiting in vain for human nobility to penetrate their unfortunate fate, their hope is futile for the triggering action of human spirits of mercy and redemption, redeeming the promise of rescue with immediate help. They put some issues on their web-sites but one can’t count on completeness. After the herd is gone, oftenly, the affected might even suffer more suppression, more violence, more pain. So the HRO’s resort to smaller battlefields, where moral-victory is cheap to obtain.

While i.e. the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria has not changed through HRO’s intervention and initiatives, with the people more or less left to their own survival skills, if they are lucky enough to still have a chance to apply them, the voices of ‘moral justice’ raise again over Egypt.

‘Egypt must immediately and unconditionally release women protesters‘, demand Amnesty International and other HR-groups.-

What happened? About 22 women from the Muslim Brotherhood camp, 11 of which were minors, stood trial in Alexandria ‘for simply protesting’, as the narrative goes, this week, ‘21 women and teenage girls were found guilty of obstructing traffic during a pro-Islamist protest last month. The 14 women were imprisoned for 11 years, while the seven under the age of 18 were sent to juvenile prison.’ Newspapers showed pictures of the girls in white pious prison attire which would make your heart break, wouldn’t you have read as well, that some of them threw stones at passersby. Rough justice? “Yes, it is!” one does spontaneously concede upon the inappropriateness of this out-proportionate sentence. – How rough is it really? Isn’t it true that all judiciary is been acted out on the background of their societal context through the ones in power? Yes, it is.-

Here is an example of authentic state brutality from a history that still resonates in our modern world and had been thought of while phrasing the UN-charter of Universal Human Rights. In the late 1930-ies, a resistance youth-group, mostly aged 14 to 18, had formed in Nazi-Germany. They rejected the Nazis‘ authoritarianism and set up protests, gatherings on street corners, ‘engaged in hiking and camping trips, defying the restrictions on free movement, which kept them away from the prying eyes of the totalitarian regime’, since camp-activity was sanctioned and encouraged by the governmental establishment. However: as soon as members of these groups had been identified by the Nazi-German state-security, the Gestapo, ‘as belonging to the various gangs, they were often rounded up and released with their heads shaved to shame them. In some cases, young people were sent to concentration camps or prison’ as one can read in various sources. In late 1944, ‘the state’ ordered a crackdown on the group, leading to 13 youngsters being publicly hanged in the city of Cologne.-

That had been an act of judiciary self-understanding in the late 30-ies of the last century. Time has changed. The surface of human nature has changed. Human nature has not.

In today’s Egypt, where an interim-government seeks ways to reach to presidential elections to achieve a system of governance, that will find mainstream consent, while keeping a preliminary ‘emergency-tool’ since the state-of-emergency had been annulled in accordance with the road-map, ‘Egypt’s president passed a law on Sunday making it illegal to hold demonstrations without the approval of the police and banning protests in places of worship, the perimeter of governmental buildings and of course banning weapons of any kind and, like everywhere else in the world, a ban on wearing masks. What is different is: now one isn’t even allowed to gather without permission, if the number of assembly exceeds 10 (ten) people.

In a country like Egypt, where most socializing activities take place in large groups, the limitation to 10 is of course causing chuckles of laughter.. But wait: as clumsy an initiative as this ‘anti-protest-law’ comes over, as – regretfully – justified it should be viewed at. – With some youth agitated by the Muslimbrotherhood ‘to defend the rules of democracy and insist on the freely-elected president Mohamed Morsi’s reinstatement’, and a sense of entitelment to ‘have a right’ to demolish the University, set fire to the building, holding protests with throwing stones, Molotov-cocktails and disrupting public order, one can hardly deny that that kind of ‘peaceful protest’ wouldn’t demand some regulatory adjustment. “Students are the center of Egypt. When you limit their freedom, you limit Egypt” was a slogan. Really?

In the light of what Egypt, a state-in-the-making, has already to defend I see no wisdom in this freedom. Next to all the economical projects, having and are being signed with Gulf allies, the World-Bank is prepared for substantial support: 24 projects account for $4.6 billion are added to the Egyptian portfolio. “We are preparing new projects that are priorities for the people of Egypt” according to Hartwig Schafer, the WB country director.

What is an essential condition for economic activity? Freedom of schedule! – Protestors blocking the roads in random demonstrations, chanting for ‘Freedom’ just has no appeal and is met with little understanding for and from all the companies and individuals required, to be or get involved on all the projected enterprises!

At a point I was wondering: what ‘freedom’ is the pro-Morsi youth having in mind? Is what they actually mean liberating themselves from a mostly dull and deprived home-environment?

As a sound majority of Egyptians state: we need to eat before we can discuss the details of our political agenda. The time to protest is not now.-

With the new protest-law enforcement, old activists came back into the scene, most notably the heroes of the first days of the revolution, who made it to the hearts & minds of the forces who fight for democracy in Egypt, one of whom is Alaa Abdel Fattah, whose intellectual means are obviously confined to the petty limitations of setting his goal at chaos and disruption. “#FreeAlaa”. Seriously?? A revived hash tag on Twitter reflects the solidarity with Alaa, whose history goes back to 2005, when he followed his parent’s foot-steps as political activists, both of whom started political activism under Sadat. Alaa’s father, a human-rights attorney, had been arrested by Mubarak’s State Security in 1983 for 5 years and he reportedly had been tortured.- Aged 24, Alaa himself became a noticeable part of the opposition-front under Hosni Mubarak. His blog gained merits. On May 7th 2006, Alaa Abdel-Fattah was arrested during a peaceful protest after he called for an independent judiciary. His arrest, along with that of several other bloggers and activists, spurred solidarity protests by others around the world, some of whom created the blog “Free Alaa” devoted to calling for his release from jail. El-Fattah was released on 20 June 2006, after spending 45 days in jail. More actions followed..

But what did he learn, allow me to limit the time-frame, in the 3 years after January 25th 2011? I find it incomprehensible that an activist who, at this point of time, hasn’t anything more to offer other than ‘No 2 All’ still gets this amount of public compassion. – Probably because the Ministry of Interior doesn’t leave out any mistake one can think of..

Take how the law is being bended, when it comes to crimes committed by the ‘soldiers of justice’ the police officers. To address only one, most recent, prominent example: In March, a policeman was convicted of shooting at protesters, deliberately aiming at their eyes, during demonstrations in November 2011 (and it had been more then only one person who lost his eye!). The man dubbed the “eye sniper” was sentenced to three years in prison. (?!?) And now they are considering to again allowing Military trials for civilians. I know too little about Egypt’s law-system to see the necessity of this; my explanation would be ‘securing military locations’ – but as well the judiciary could amend the civil law for cases like that.- .. see what is stirring the justified outrage?

To be clear: I am not happy about the demonstration-law. But the alternative would, as I understand the situation, be, at this point, the extension of the state-of-emergency, with the curfew and, I speculate, the package holds the ‘martial-law’. So having abolished the state-of-emergency came as a relief to the people, since the lifting of the curfew, we all suffered under, promised to restore a kind of normalcy.

Egypt still is ‘in a state of war’ as some say and see it. Fact is: there is a war against terrorism which is not over yet.

Some dispute the right of Adly Mansour, the interim-president, to sign a law, here: the demonstration law, since he is not elected, only appointed. True. According to this logic, the demonstrations against the protest-law were ‘completely justified’. The argument holds: ‘if the interim government is inept to come to terms with their opposing forces they should resign. – Hmm.. and then what?

I can’t see that as a solution of the core-problem since until now Egypt didn’t find consensus among the battling political competitors. In a phase, where the country is just a stone’s throw away from “The Reign of Terror”, as the revolution unfolded in France, demanding over 35.000 lives of those people, who had other ideas to realize ‘fraternité, égalité et liberté’ than the political current of 1793.

As for the jailed women: they will be pardoned. Thanks to the pressure of HRO’s. Unjustifiably so! They supported a public pressure and squeezed that out of the interim-government, which is coming more and more under fire, since a lot of people expect miracles to happen to them individually, where a government can only define the framework of activity. What message is that, to pardon those girls? You throw stones at people to communicate your ‘political disapproval’ and then the HR organizations come to help you out?

As ridiculous as it is to confine them to 11 years in prison and spreading over the newspapers that their education won’t suffer for the Minister of Education lets the public know, that he makes sure that the girls will be provided with books and can make their exams in their penitentiary, as wrong is it, to let them get away with it.

The road to democracy is already paved. Interruptions through demonstrations and morally bankrupt HRO’s won’t stop it.

“All life is a purposeful struggle, and your only choice is the choice of a goal.” Ayn Rand. I am a natural born optimist. I believe Egypt will find her way toward the aspired destination. The realist in me however worries whether a lifetime will suffice to see this happen. Please activists I’m asking you: why are you wasting your and other people’s energy for small battles, where the fight for the real rights would need all this energy and more? Only engaging in constructive opposition can lead toward the achievement of the right of every Egyptian to be treated with respect, consideration and dignity.

“God only knows the pain in our souls”

On November 23, 2013March 10, 2014 By davb.deIn Egypt2 Comments

Profound change is being expected in Egypt. Profound change is happening. Profound disappointment spoils the spirit.

Ever since in Egypt people started to fight for liberating themselves from authoritarian suffocation and social injustice back in January 2011, I was always irritated by what had all been expected to get accomplished in ‘no’ time’ and from ‘others’.Back then, during Morsi reign, and, still to a great extent, now.–

The first phase of the second or third stage of the Egyptian revolution (depends where you start, in 1952 or in 1919) begun with the interim governance of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) in February 2011.

It soon dawned upon Egyptians that democracy is a process and not a ready deal. A bit like a screwed up orthodox Coptic marriage. You can’t just divorce. It’s meant to be a life-time commitment. –

An unprecedented challenge awaited the interim government.

The best ideas had yet no institutional structures to be put into practice. The process of structure building had been continuously overshadowed and disrupted as well by traumas of an increasing crime rate –unheard of before-, since in the days of January 28^th and thereafter. Back then, some ‘members of the revolution’ went to free inmates from their prison-cells, in addition prison-breaks were heard of in the news for a couple of days. The numbers accumulated to approximately 21.000 fugitives from justice.. Now ‘old bills got settled’, cars got stolen in horrifying numbers with breathtaking professionalism, burglary became ‘common’..

The Supreme Council with its military personnel was certainly expert in the art of war, but lacked all necessary skills or personnel, to regain already control over the stumbling economy, which had lost its healthy swing from the pre-revolution-era.

Right from the beginning of the revolution, freedom of speech had been used in abundance and seemed to mean: publicly talking about ‘everything in all aspects without the slightest restrain’. A public debate started about religious fascism, since now, as a matter of ‘democratically open-mindedness’, religious parties mushroomed, and started to openly fantasize about their visions for a religiously guided state.

Above all, the SCAF had a heavy heritage to handle.- The initial days of the revolution left martyrs. ‘The people’ wanted justice. Too unbearable did it seem to accept ‘starting a new chapter’, working toward presidential elections, without holding the security forces and other government institutions of the overthrown state accountable for their pre-revolution-time, and for their most current misdemeanors..

The old government was still run by the pre-revolution administrators and employees. The spirit broke for many.- Retaliation became an antagonistic demand; the biggest release of unifying energy while at the same time the biggest obstacle.

Some tried to press for ‘justice’. Demonstrations on Tahrir became a ‘common’ Friday pass-time activity. Universities went on strike, while workers strikes became habitual, private companies were surprised with a significant loss of work-ethics.

The SCAF later had gained an infamous place in Egypt’s revolutionary history through the ‘Maspero-massacer’, which lead to more demonstrations culminating into “Mohamed Mahmoud” clashes where more than forty demonstrators lost their lives and hundreds were injured or left crippled. That added grave anger and seeded more disappointment in the hearts of the protagonists of the revolution.

The violence kept investors very reserved about their aspirations to continue their activities with the aimed at pre-revolutionary plans for expansion, locked in the company drawers, until recently.

Back in spring 2011 the pious segment of society gained grounds and social life started to slightly change already. Some Clubs ‘played it safe’ stipulating new entry regulations: “strictly couples only” and the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political branch of the Muslimbrotherhood, were publishing their program, despite their explicit announcement still a couple of month ago to “never partake in politics”.

A lot lead to bitterness against the representatives of the old regime and the members of the security forces and the military. – As is well known, as a result, Mohamed Morsi had been elected in a run-off election and Egypt prepared itself mentally for the beginning of the era of democracy.

Quite a lot of people imagined the ‘out-of-the-race’ leader of the Muslimbrotherhood (MB)/FJP, Khairat Al-Shater, rubbing his hands while his mouth filled itself up with saliva upon Mohamed Morsi’s electoral victory on June 30^th 2012.. Recall that Essam El-Erian, the MB spokesman, had already announced in December 2011 ‘We reserve the right to revise all treaties’.- Others were more relaxed and wondered in light of the mostly uninspiring and dull visions, which had been circulating in all details , whether ‘mediocrity wasn’t a good predictor for success’..

The election was concluded. Normalcy tried to take over. People started joking about ‘Um-Ahmed’, now Egypt’s First Lady. From what I saw on pictures: a conservative, plain women giving no hints of mental sophistication except in an interview, where I recall to have admired her bravery while she was speaking about how she managed to deal with the duties as a ‘single’ mother while her husband was in prison, which had frequently been the case.

One was however wondering, whether “president Morsi had any plans to announce his prime-minister & cabinet before the first 100 days of office will be over” ..

Anyways. After 27 days in office, Morsi presented his prime minister, Hisham Kandil. Dr. Hisham Kandil.- The ‘people of Egypt’ were still expecting miracles to happen. Social justice seemed to have a chance to take center-stage, because ‘the party carried it even in their name’. – Rather sooner than later, Kandil was nicknamed ‘Cotton-Nil’ since he responded to the energy crises emerging in summer that year with bizarre suggestions..

It would be incorrect to state the year, while the Brotherhood was in power, was inefficient.- They accomplished a lot. Mostly they established themselves in the governmental apparatus, their best people had been placed and/or promoted into key-positions and they, most probably, started spinning a net to cover each segment of governmental administration.

But they did, what they did, not good enough. Not for themselves, since they missed the art of imposing their will on a stubborn people. Not for Egypt, since they missed the point that they were expected to include a national dimension into their political agenda.

I.e. already in August, Coptic families were expelled in the Nile City of Dashour, Dostor newpaper got confiscated for ‘insulting the president and igniting religious strife’ .. – According to the Ministry of Interior, within the first 48 days of Morsi rule, about 1400 strikes, sit-ins and protests had been recorded.

In December Morsi pushed through a patched-up constitution, ‘home-made’ and outrageously partisan. The constituent assembly made it to the daily headlines through publishing who left and why. Hardly, if any representative of the Egyptian elite, or Coptic’s were to be found in the committee due to unsolvable arguments and the unwillingness of the ‘entitled’ committee representatives, who made the word ‘compromise’ sound like a concept from outer-space. It should be clear, that the elites of Egypt are the ones who provide jobs and ideas. And for the Copts: many of whom are members of the elites as well: all of them are the ones who must be seen as original Egyptians, direct descendants from the Pharaohs.

As a consequence of this act of state-monopolizing, big demonstrations and sit-ins started at the presidential palace after there was no doubt left, that Morsi and his ‘brothers’ obviously had an agenda on their own.. Ittahadya became the new center of resistance. The ‘freely elected forces’ of the new government tried to get rid of criticism and protesters, killing them, torturing them and calling them names, condemning them publicly as ‘thugs’ and ‘thieves’ and ‘infidels’ and ‘drunkards’. The Press was intimidated, religious liberty condemned, human rights subjected to gradually been downgraded to ‘impertinent demands’.

While ‘Cairo’ was burning, Morsi went to Germany for money. Angela Merkel was irritated about the visit. She brushed him off with stating that ‘before any money support could be granted, the Federal Republic of Germany would want to see – firstly: respect for human rights, secondly: freedom of religion and thirdly: freedom of press.’ That had been accompanied by a juicy remark from the News-desk: “In Egypt Morsi gives the Pharaoh and here he playing the Sphinx.”

Things didn’t go well on the economic level. One might recall the debates that alcohol should be banned and tourists shouldn’t wear bikinis on the beaches of Egypt. The penalty came right away: International Tourism Fair in Madrid leaves Egypt empty “We have not signed a single contract for the summer season.” And that had been only one example. To cut it short: a sharp minded witness to the burlesque theater brought it to the point: ‘The Muslimbrothers seem to invent a new economic theory, the “Rabinna Yustor”* school of economics’ [*So Help Me God (to be said like this in a state of despair, expecting the worse to happen)]

* * *

June 30^th had set an end to that kind of democratic experiment. July 3^rd started a new chapter, hopefully started a new chapter.-

‘The call is to all the people when the main demand is for a democratic rule. The call goes to the army, when the main demand is prioritizing on safety.’ This sums up the dilemma, Egypt finds itself caught in right now.

Three years of ‘transition’ without the nation having had neither the time nor the chance to sit back and take a re-creative break, to sit, mind gaming about feasible objectives and schedule manageable contributions in their capacity as citizens.

Egyptians seem to be suffering under a mental jet-lag. Too much, too fast, not arrived yet..

As soon as the future looks ‘bright’, violent opposition emerges again, making the long awaited, smooth transition to a participatory and fair political system seem impossible.

Consider this: today, Friday November 22^nd, pro-Morsi crowds gathered in the proximity of the dispersed sit-ins, in Nasr city near the Rabaa mosque, to mark their loyalty to the danced-out disposed ex-president who is probably sitting in his prison cell hoping to get freed from his Hamas-friends, like in January 2011, wishing to escape the trial that will be bringing to public attention the sediment of political aspirations in the hands and minds of individuals, who flocked together in a clan, in delusional overestimation of their abilities, clueless about the true wisdom of a generous intellect, ignorant about the core quality of the benevolence of the genuine mind of human nature, perverted even in their distorted profession of faith.. This is why so many people want General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to become the next president of Egypt. A pious, warmhearted, intellectually sharp patriot, who happens to be a statesman. –

For now the Muslimbrothers still succeed – against cash one would speculate, to bring demonstrators in the streets. They smash car-windows and frighten passersby to death, throw Molotov cocktails into a tram so the tram is set ablaze, crashes with cars and leave nine people injured, while in the same time they distribute flyers to passersby, elaborating on their peaceful way and their right to protest the ‘military-coup’. Yesterday they smeared “Marty’s University” on the entrance where ‘Al-Azhar’ was written. Setting fire on campus, throwing rocks and destroying what came in their way.- It took a while, until the University had been granted the right, to have police on campus, when needed. – What else can you do?

As we know from the Mohamed Mahmoud commemorate demonstrations on November 19^th, Morsi-support youth was found, probably speculating on the mental connection with demonstrators like the humble hero, Ahmed Harara, the man who lost two eyes through gun shots by the police, one in 2011, one in 2012, now fighting for the revolution through tirelessly lobbying for the demands of January 25^th, seeing no point in violence.- The pro-Morsi-youth provoked the security forces with Molotov cocktails since the order that day for police posted at the periphery of the protests seemed to have been ‘self-restrain’. Only when the police-officers had been thrown at with stones and Molotov-cocktails later that day, did the police respond with tear-gas and bird-shots to defend themselves and protect public property, here: the Egyptian museum, from assault.

What worth is a political claim which is brought forward through ignorant youth with base and clumsy and perpetual pointless violence on one side, and heinous acts of cold-blooded murders through trained accomplices on the other side? I find it hard to believe, that Lady Ashton still insists on inclusiveness?! – What’s on her mind? Was she on a romantic date with Khairat El-Shater and now the MB can blackmail her? Absurd, right? Well, as absurd as the call for ‘inclusiveness’ at this point. ‘The Muslim Brotherhood has committed grave mistakes during deposed president Mohamed Morsi’s one-year rule’, said the Grandson of Brotherhood’s founder Hassan al-Banna. ‘The state must never become hostage of terrorists’ decided then-chancellor Helmut Schmidt in Germany, when the RAF ( Red Army Fraction, a leftist terrorist group) in the ‘70-ies threatened to kill the president of the syndicate of employers whom they held kidnapped and murdered him in cold blood, once the state did not comply with their demands. Schmidt bore the consequences. – Egypt, the way I see it, is now in a worse position then Germany ever was..

* * *

Egypt’s ‘youth’ constitutes roughly 40% of the population males & females between the age of 15 to 30. If you look closely: the demonstrations Egypt is suffering under now are to 90% been acted out by students, vastly MB-sympathizers, mostly from Al-Azhar, the religious authority of Islam before the MB almost successfully tried to deprive it of this position, which it held for centuries. Some of these ‘innocent’ young men and women are ready to commit violence and hence do threaten the much needed recovery process of the state. Without stability, no progress on democracy or ventures in economy can be achieved. CAPMAS announced that the annual inflation rate increased by 11.5 percent in October, while investments are plagued with low-qualified workers with the alarming number of recently closed factories, at which the state offers ‘emergency funds to save what must not be an additional national tragedy, to affected 613 factories, who halted operations. The number of millionaires in Egypt fell by around 3,000 during Morsi’s one-year rule, according to Credit Suisse Research Institute’s (CSR) Global Wealth Report, 2013. Brain-drain is becoming another and very important issue..

“Oppression is the same if not more so, killing is not according to identity, it has become random, the Ministry of Interior did not change and the systems remains unchanged too.” This sentence expresses an opposition-sentiment from yet another spectrum.

How, I keep wondering, is the state supposed to defend itself and move forward, when police officers are being shot in front of their homes or at work in an unpredictable manner, when soldiers are being killed, on daily basis? Is anyone of those hard-core regime-opposing individuals feeling uncomfortable while reading on the morning twitter-feed about killed police-officers or soldiers? – Are those ‘No-To-Police&Army’ sentiments not much better placed in a productive opposition where unified efforts can compete to make acts of security forces arbitrary impossible?

If Egypt wants to escape the traumas of transition and the fallacy of believing an orderly ‘clean-up-the old-regime-first’ approach before they allow a state to emerge and shape in the most desirable way: it has to make a choice. Simultaneously it has to cut short on acts undermining the state by allowing the security forces to do what is necessary to defend the state against those who aim at its downfall through igniting chaos and attacking its members and citizens with deadly assaults.- At the same time they have to work on self-preservation. Until now the Gulf-allies, Russia, the US, EU and the rest of the international community are still able and willing to keep and seek cooperation. This fortunate circumstances have lead to a favorable rating of Egypt’s economical credibility.- A great political success which is to be attributed to the interim government. It would now be high time to admit that democracy needs more than saying ‘No’ or, what is equally unproductive: apathy and passivity.. It does require a lot of ‘Yes’ followed by ideas and deeds. Egypt must become a national work-shop where every member brings in his/her ability. That will lead to arguments, confrontation and experience which will have a good chance to grow into a democratic understanding. Initiatives on all levels of society, private and governmentally assisted, are, what can trigger awareness and will translate into pushing the democratic process so many people have already died for, into the right direction.

Egypt’s military backed civil interim government probably sought to draw a line under the past, marking a revolution-restart with the – already infamous – provisional memorial on Tahrir. That attempt earned them scornful laughter, cynic remarks or irritation.

It was an untimely gesture for my taste. Yet what irritated me was: that hardly anyone pointed out the fact of its provisional character, hardly anyone found that worth mentioning. – But then again: it triggered a debate. Soon, God willing, we will see the first drafts from the artists, who participate in the competition, introducing their ideas for a worthy and symbolic memorial, which then will be discussed.

“We do not fear, because we know if we fall while defending our country we will be martyrs; we will stand like martyrs in front of God, we are ‘ready to die’ for Egypt” said General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on occasion of the funeral of the conscripts who had been heinously killed one their way home to a few days of well deserved holidays, after having risked their lives while being stationed in Sinai, currently the country’s Achilles heel. –

It is becoming clear by now that Egypt needs to show decisiveness in order to move on. Clear as well is, that nobody with a healthy mind will allow the county and its nation to sink into chaos. What is not clear is: does Egypt have an alternative to urging General Sisi into presidency? Or, to pick up a recent suggestion: is Egypt already lacking the alternative for an immediate transition into a purely civil government and forced to get familiar with the concept of a ‘war-government’?

‘Be the change you want to see’! Let confusion not dominate common sense.

Purifying Mistaken Notions of Reality

On November 5, 2013November 6, 2013 By davb.deIn Egypt2 Comments

Emotions were high before the day begun. Today has been the first day of the trial against Mohamed Morsi, the first post revolutionary elected president of Egypt.

The country prepared itself. The Ministry of Interior had ordered 20.000 security forces to protect its citizens from attacks, assaults and all what could be anticipated, taking into account what the defiant pro-Morsi apologists announced.

The nerves were on edge on this first day of the trial of Mohamed Morsi, a man who won the presidency over Egypt through a dismal sentiment, namely a choice between plague & cholera resulting from disgust, disdain and disappointment over the first free elections held in Egypt, which ended in a fateful run-off poll in June 2012 with a participation of eligible voters of 31% as some said, the official turnout was reported to have been 38% ..

The country had been in a dramatic state of ‘national disillusionment’ before this run-off election. The spark of ‘what can all be accomplished’ became less shiny and it occurred to most people, that concepts, drive and organization were in dire demand to transform a country that had accumulated outrageously disproportional, and to some grave extent, incomprehensible ways to administer grievance and the demands of its citizens.

I was shocked when I learned that friends with rather ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive ‘views (not in the strictly political sense) on governance with a somewhat innocent expression on their faces ensured me that they would vote for Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. This way they – main reason – can vote out the much more detested military candidate Ahmed Shafik, whom they regarded as a mere tool from the ‘military junta’ as the SCAF (Supreme Council of Armed Forces) had been derided by the left-wing revolutionaries and Shafik was a representative of ‘the old regime’. In addition they trusted Morsi’s eloquent and elaborated promises to include Copts, women, youth, everyone (!) in the new government, should he be elected. ‘The good thing about the Muslim brothers is’ and I heard that a lot back then ‘that they are organized.’

And this is what Egypt needed most. Orderly governance after months of turmoil and constant decline in expectations of what the upheaval from January 25^th, that soon turned out to be the day that officially started a revolution, can achieve, based on the facts that make Egypt what it became: a very complex country due to a very heterogeneous population with numerous of social antagonisms.-

I still have a problem with the common narrative “Mohammed Morsi, the first freely elected president of Egypt” – what had been free about the run-off election considering the predicament Egypt was already suffering? In those days there wasn’t ‘anybody’ who looked forward to the run-off elections with enthusiasm. Too much had gone down the drain. Shattered dreams already.. People had been pressured to vote facing a possible penalty of 500.-LE, should they not go to the polling-stations..

When Morsi, the spare-tire, as he had spitefully been labeled by the ones, who couldn’t think of the Muslim Brothers ever to be entrusted with a political leading role, agitated, since the parties favorite candidate had to be replaced, won by a hair thin margin, most of the people of Egypt were ready and willing to submit to the ‘wisdom’ of an eighty year old organization, accepting the outcome as the price they had to pay so that Egypt could at last begin the long awaited democratic era.

‘Public’ consent at the times was: the Muslim Brothers had been forced into underground thus they enjoyed a widespread ‘we know what it means to suffer suppression’ sentiment and had publicly been perceived as pious charity-workers. Their image by and large shaped over the years, when, to mention just one noticeable example, the Mubarak administration failed to perform its duty in the case of the tragic ferry-boat disaster, where hundreds of people drowned since the ferry boat was overloaded while the president of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, had been reported to have watched a football-match, the African cup was at stake (and he didn’t want to be disturbed I speculate). Who came for first rescue and immediate help for the poor people who had been trapped into a trip on a boat, owned by an unscrupulous business man, who, is that needed to be mentioned, never had been held liable for the human catastrophe his company caused? The Muslim Brothers! They brought blankets and soup and helped to the best of their abilities. – And this was by no means a single occurrence.

But their organizational skills had been overestimated. Their commitment to the national well-being tragically misunderstood.

On social media one could follow the ‘Morsi-meter’ which had been set for the first 100 days of his presidency to monitor his performance. What had been more interesting to follow up however were the choirs raising their voices over social media.- A running gag was Morsi on Twitter. When the nation expected a speech, Morsi tweeted, preferably around 1.30 am in the morning..

Today was the day.

Anxieties were high. Protests had been announced. Violence was to be expected. Morsi supporters geared up for mass-rallies to bring back the man, who should show the world what ‘democracy’ was and who has been sitting stubbornly in his ‘undisclosed location’ sending messages about ‘soon victory’ to his loyal followers whose number however shrank day by day. The Morsi supporters expected the man to lead Egypt toward prosperity and fulfill their dream of becoming winners of society, their dream for change of fate. They expected that from a man who drove a country with a history of 5000 years to the verge of disintegration within just one year. To be fair as it became clear in the course of the events: it had been rather the reign of the party leaders who had selected him as their front man. He never really appeared to have been ‘his own man’.

In the greater Cairo area, support marches have begun already following Friday prayers in several districts including Gesr El-Suez, Ain Shams, Nasr City, Shobra, Haram, Mattariya, Mohandiseen, Helwan, and El-Warraq. Yesterday, in Cairo, a march also reached the vicinity of Al-Ittihadeya presidential palace in Heliopolis district. However, the army had barricaded the one-time-headquarters of deposed president Morsi with tanks and barbed wire to prevent protesters from reaching it. A similar march reached Al-Qobba Palace, another presidential house located in Hadayek El-Qobba. Another pro-Morsi march converged at the Military Intelligence headquarters on Salah Salem road in Cairo, as state news agency MENA reported. Schools had been ‘called off’, the Corniche in Maadi, where the High Court is located was announced to be blocked with security. Many private companies kept their offices close today, I myself followed, once I read that the American University of Cairo officially announced ‘security concerns’.

This afternoon I saw Mohamed Morsi on BBC-world. I had read in the news already about how he insisted on his suit and that he refused the court-trial altogether rejecting it as illegal. Now I saw him how he was walking wearing his suit, in the court-cage next to the other defendants, all dressed in the court-uniform, which Morsi refused in order to underline his what? Pride? If he had pride he would have responded to the people at least, when on June 30^th the whole country marched against him, stirring the question if that had been the biggest march in history of mankind. Independence? Hardly. When Lady Ashton visited him in his ‘undisclosed location’ he wasn’t able to answer her questions since he had to confer with his supreme guide.. Yet his moves seemed so attuned with his attitude and self-understanding. Slightly irritated, yet unangry, if not friendly. – Like on this picture where Obama is carrying Morsi on his arm, heartbreaking if you look at it – Obama with a veil and Morsi dressed up as a baby-girl, smiling curiously and friendly into the world without the concept of harm, being untouched yet from the forces of evil..

When Morsi approached the iron mesh of the court-cage and probably said that sentence which had been quoted a lot “I am the president of Egypt” I felt like ‘with this sentence he didn’t mean any of what it said’. It was to me as if he was appealing for humanity, as if he were shy to ask for forgiveness. I wasn’t listening to what he said. I just looked at how he moved. It moved me.

I was touched. Not that I pity Morsi. His blame exceeds his capacity. He contributed a lot to what we here in Egypt have to overcome..

Humanity unfolded its more undesirable and dis-integrative facets as the months went by during his despotic reign with gaps deepening. Compassion has become a sentiment reserved mainly for the people of the own camp. Feeling sorry for a political enemy’s mishaps? No energy left!! Rather a good reason to enjoy the own ideological supremacy. Friendships broke off on daily basis, turning best friends into worst enemies once they engaged into political arguments. – People never hated each other openly. The ideological poison the Brotherhood spread throughout the nation with their excellent PR-machines makes every accusation the prosecution will bring forward justified.

During the Morsi tenure, protests set up where people claimed the fulfillment of the promises for which they sacrificed their votes. He didn’t pay his dues. Soon the protests grew into massive demonstrations and developed into violent fights. Instead of respecting the protesters as voters, Morsi and his ministers had dishonored and shamed those citizens calling them undemocratic, remnants of the Mubarak regime, thugs.- Those were ‘ordinary’ citizens. Doctors, engineers, teachers, unemployed, students..

Remembering what Morsi all had ignored and accepted and enforced: people lost their lives during his year through tortures in police detention, through police brutality during demonstrations and mysterious murders. Journalists were prosecuted; it became life-threatening when openly questioning the sole legitimacy of Islam. Even on face-book one was hesitant to post certain religious jokes when it could remotely being seen as insult to Islam, remember ‘Micky&Mini’? Bearded and veiled?? Men grew beards and marked their foreheads with ‘prayer-tattoos’ to demonstrate piety.. – Egypt lost its lighthearted flair. It was true what a newspaper titled in late autumn that year: “The laughter has died out on Egypt”

Back to the opening of the trial: I have read on twitter that 2 journalists, when they saw Morsi, yelled ‘execute him’ .. .- !? After all what Egypt went through until today I would have expected a more differentiated view on how to put justice into practice. Yet.. who can blame them? They might have lost a friend or a relative..

Is what Egypt is now painfully trying to achieve while omitting the decades it took while it was still originating: the adaption of a system from a region of the world, which took more than 150 painful years to reach to the consensus which resulted into what we relate to as a ‘civilized democracy’, compatible with the base instincts of human nature, where some are still genuinely guided by rather simple solutions, if you see the above sentiments as exemplification?-

Undoubtedly can the state shape the concept of proportion when defending its vital interest. Egypt as a nation that is on ‘re-set’ for the course of democracy since July 3^rd, continuing where it started on January 25^th, as I understand the situation. Morsi after all had the choice to say “No”. He could have thrown himself in front of the supreme guide and beg to leave his office, for the love of Egypt..

For the base human, whose best aspect is their emotional immediacy, a Western legal system would be met with irritation. Are not eventually ‘the tigers of wrath wiser than the horses of instruction’, as William Blake phrased it?

It is not that I think Mohamed Morsi shouldn’t be tried. Even when he was not his own man, he was in charge. It had been in his might to say “No”, when on December 5^th protesters had been killed, while all they wanted was to remind him of his promises..

I am absolutely certain that the Egyptian state will find an appropriate way to handle this case. It’s good that the case is postponed. Yet I’m curious how the judiciary will placate the bereaved of the martyrs and the advocates of modern civil society, which has with it a clearly defined rule of law based on an evolutionary grown conception of man.

It has been the helplessness of the human being Mohamed Morsi that touched me. This friendly man, how he respectfully came to the limit of the fence and saying his sentences while his expression seemed almost gentle.. he is either mentally mistaken or a great performer.- In both cases unfit for presidency.

The editors of the late edition of the German governmental news were quick to decide which pictures to show. They didn’t bother to show that picture of the aimlessly wandering man who has missed all the chances he had, to be on the other side of the cage. It seems that the Western governments are settling their minds for ‘thumps down’ and thus show that amount of mercilessness that is important to bear the burden of human error.

Continue reading “Purifying Mistaken Notions of Reality” →

Drifting from an Utopian Dream toward Reality

On November 2, 2013November 3, 2013 By davb.deIn EgyptLeave a comment

My surprise is still fresh upon reading in today’s paper “Cabinet gives security forces right to enter university campuses” as a reaction to Wednesdays vandalism in the renown Al-Azhar University, leaving a material damage coming to around 10 MIO EGP.

What I am surprised at is: the University president, and academic body I suppose, fought for the right of defending themselves, the uninvolved students and the university premises.-

What happened? Some dozens of students, masked and unmasked took decisive action, after a ‘futile’ two weeks of protests against ‘the coup that ousted ‘democratically elected president Morsi’. They have stormed the administrative building, marched right through, heading straight upstairs to the administration rooms; while dozens of protesters cheered outside the building, those inside threw out the contents of torn documents and chairs.

Security had been banned from Campus by popular demand in the course of the countries way toward democracy.

Things are still stormy in Egypt.

While the interim government is continuously working on the July 3rd announced road-map agenda and preparing for elections with simultaneously attuning the countries legal framework with the basic requirements that constitute a democratic state, some still question the legitimacy of the interim government’s existence.

Currently I see the political map of citizens, who inhabit Egypt, roughly divided into four parts.

In the meantime a midget minority with huge media attention being locked up into their ideological insistence of seeing what happened on June 30th as a “planned, sly military coup” are on their way to regain media ground. Some go as far as seeing this merely as a continuation of the ‘big-plan’ from the military “to get what they came for on January 25th in the first place, which in those individuals views “had been a putsch against Mubarak since ‘he wanted to break the circle of military upper-hand into Egypt’s governance with installing his son Gamal as successor’”. They do have some sympathizers, especially as it is still being fiercely debated on various tv-channels that the call for inclusiveness must be respected since ‘the people had been robbed of the votes through the coup’, despite their obstinate defiance of the majority will. Altogether this choir is accumulating as much as an estimated 5% minority, since the military had shown little respect for human life during their interim-governance, formally addressed as ‘The Supreme Council of Armed Forces’ (SCAF) which lasted until the election on June 30th, 2012.

The counter group consists mainly of the inviolable supporters of General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who don’t hold their breath to – at each and every suitable or unsuitable opportunity- show their typhlotic support for the army, taking the proverb “Praise the bridge that carried you over” very literally.

Well. Fact is, the military, represented through General Sisi, saved Egypt on June 30th from falling prey to what the country already experienced until then: a very authoritative reign with fascist aspects, as some point out, reminding of (how else can one see it) the surprising attempt of a ‘coup d’etat’, when ‘democratically elected’ president Morsi in November 2012 with a pen stroke intended to grant himself unprecedented powers over Egypt. This group as well enjoys media attention, however mostly from the local press and television/radio stations. This group represents another minority, maybe 7%, representing the other extreme side of the spectrum of the Egyptian society.

Just for the record: both these groups are the ones who currently enjoy most of the media attention. They are the ones referred to when the ‘utter divide of Egypt’ is being discussed.

A third group is, in my view, much more deserving of media attention since they have been neglected all along yet they served to coin a term unheard of until then: the ‘couch party’. The name speaks for itself.

The law of media attention is simple: who never appears gives nothing worth mentioning. “The couch-party” is Egypt’s more or less politically apathetic majority. ‘Almost three years have gone by, and the only change visible is increased crime rate, raising prices, with traffic worse than ever – someone has to do something so Egypt will prosper.’ This sentence roughly describes the main sentiment toward the revolution from this societal conglomerate of ‘realists’, as they certainly see themselves. However they by all means do support the revolutions, both: the first on January 25th and the second on June 30th. Most of them certainly took to the streets on both these days! Make no mistake!! But their expectations are not met yet. They somehow expect ‘dinner to be served’. Having been used to that things ‘get done’ with little contribution and/or even lesser sense of that they themselves can ever make a difference when taking political matters into their own hands. For them it just never happened. For as long as the younger generation can think, having been born in the late 70ies and thereafter: they grew into the concept of ‘this is how things are’..I’ll do what helps me and my family. To be fair, in addition life really takes a lot of energy to survive.. As for the older generation of the ‘couch-party’: they might feel they’ve seen too much already. Whatever change comes into their lives might eventually be seen as an intrusion, an interruption of their self-chosen refuge-from-obstacles resulting into avoidance and routine life. I volunteer to assume they make 45% of the population.

And then there is a fourth group. And the good news is: they are energetic and they are a ‘majority’ in the pragmatic sense of the word, covering all ages and all social strata. I would estimate their share in society as high as 40%. In this group I see all the people who carry the intellectual conceptualization of the process toward democracy. Here you find citizens who do care about national integrity, progress and pride.

Some members of this societal spectrum abhor both: the Muslimbrotherhood and the army. The first since they abused the country for their groups own ends, the latter for its infamous brutality especially during a demonstration against an arbitrary church demolition in late October 2011, leaving protesters heinously killed, without acknowledging security forces misdemeanor, plus the officers in charge were never held accountable for these incomprehensible killings. To be clear: they do appreciate the army for having helped the country against Morsi. From this camp matter of factually comes a great deal of support for the army even now, but refreshingly critical. However some support the army to the extent that they resented Egypt’s most famous satirists, Bassem Youssef, when he in his first show, after a three month break, mocked as well the army ‘worshipers’. Bassem Youssef used a somewhat displaced language and belittled his overly Sisi-passionate fellow compatriots. That hasn’t translated into an overwhelming encouragement for his comeback. As someone said it right to the point: Bassem Youssef succeeded to unify the deeply divided nation in protest against his show. Fact is: I think Egyptians stick together when it’s about family. And currently ‘Sisi’ is still a family affair since he volunteered to support saving the countries national identity.

This mentally active 40% of the population, politically very aware people, wholly trust that the Egyptian army is willing and capable of standing firm to his promise on supporting the country toward democracy.

This segment of society with all its diverse individuals is unified in their wish to pursue democracy on a very rocky road with oftentimes rough winds along the destination. These people do it for themselves and for their home country. Sentimental reasoning.. Emigrating like numerous Egyptians already did wouldn’t appeal to them on the long run. – It goes without saying that their ideas of governance come with different mind settings on how to reach there best and fastest. – But isn’t that what democracy is about?

While in Egypt people are still speculating whether General Sisi will eventually give in to presidential candidacy ‘to complete the job’ as some campaign-slogan demands, the bigger question for Egypt’s political fate is: How to translate theoretic aspirations, part of whom are utopian, into practical politics while the country is in danger of sliding down into an economical catastrophe despite the generous financial contributions coming from the Middle East alleys?

Gross economy is a complex issue. However it doesn’t need a PhD in this field to understand that a state economy requires stability to develop and prosper.

While the interim government shows earnest efforts to work off their agenda and complies with the rule of civil societies already respecting freedom of protest and freedom of speech, they attract investors and conclude contracts.

In the meantime progress is being made on key constitutional issues. For the first time Egypt will, it seems very likely, allow complete freedom of religion.

The Nil water issue, which became a matter of serious worry during Morsi reign for his offending negotiation policy with Ethiopia, is becoming small pieces of good news, with both countries finding ways to make compromises.

The government put up an initiative to help close-to-bankrupt factories with favorable conditions and loans so they can bridge the time until the economy can eventually breath-through.

Expatriates are already being thought of for providing timely election in the embassies abroad.

The General Authority for Investment is reshaping to the institution it had rightfully been praised for, namely efficiency and professionalism. Some of its best personnel had fallen prey to displacement during Morsi reign..

Egypt seems to get back on track. Slowly but steadily.

What the interim-government however is not adequately catching up with is: reforming their own apparatus. What one minister succeeds to build up or rather reestablishes with gigantic efforts i.e. the Minister of Tourism who travels the world to bring Egypt back into the catalogs, is being torn down within a blink of a second from another ‘deep-state-obstacle’. Sabotage from inside? Take a recent example: The minister of tourism succeeded to convince Germany to lift its travel warnings. Not a day later, when ‘all Egypt’ had officially been declared safe for travelling a German tourist went for a stroll in the streets of Cairo and took pictures from a bridge and some buildings. He got detained for this. – If that isn’t an act of [self-]sabotage I don’t know what is. Here is my explanation to what I label [self-]sabotage: the officer, who detained the tourist did so following his own political agenda.. for the love of his Muslim brothers.. I am convinced that he wasn’t instructed to do this, that he very well knew that he didn’t have to detain the tourist. Of course this infamous incident landed in the news. So imagine you are sitting in Germany or elsewhere and ponder about your holiday destination after having read this..

And more: there still are labor-laws in Egypt echoing the Nasr-era with workers mentally having their expectations set for a granted salary with little demand in performance. Everybody can agree that a certain minimum wage must be considered to secure the workers livelihood. But the minimum wage in mind and in discussion doesn’t come with an upfront and honest debate about work-ethics and productivity. Practically speaking: when you double or triple the minimum wage, you can only do so by reducing the number of workers or employees accordingly, to avoid the companies’ bankruptcy. Everyone who has seen a factory or a governmental office from inside can relate.

Now apart from the Gulf-alleys who know all this circumstances: who from the in addition much needed Western countries (to facilitate speedy economical recovery) would risk investing in a country with uncertain conditions? The minimum-wage debate is postponed. The security question is still pending.

While inside the ministries not all of the employees embrace the change that could cost them their job the streets are still ‘full of protest’. Not factually but perceptionally.

Once you go through the papers you’ll read of protest announcements and one finds as well minor clashed that erupted somewhere. Daily we see how soldiers in Sinai get killed in ambush or openly. Does this give the feeling of safety and security? Streets are still being blocked, the interim-government is being contorted to ‘a slave of the military junta’ not only in some media abroad but especially locally, since we have ‘freedom of expression’. – And I still am waiting for the ‘media rule of conduct’ which had been announced on July 3rd together with the road-map.

What’s the picture for the normal citizen? Electricity is working fine, fuel-supply is stable but we are getting stuck in traffic jams which frequently make everyone question one’s own sanity..

‘What Egypt needs is a mental break’ is what I every now and then thought. Especially after the August 14th agony, where the Morsi-supporters didn’t leave any choice but burdening the government to disperse the sit-ins forcefully, since they were keeping the whole country hostage. A national trauma followed.

I thought the Eid El-Adha holidays would help. To understand Egypt is to understand human nature. I don’t. The holidays didn’t help much and time is again becoming crucial. The weaker the so called ‘anti-coup’ movement gets, the more media attention they receive.

This is one reason why Egypt is still ‘in a crisis’.

How to clear this bogging cluster of hindrances, manipulation and inherent sabotage?

As for the continuous demonstrations and provocations: they’ll soon die out as far as the numbers of protesters one can observe in the streets allow predicting. Usually for every Tuesday there are ‘BIG’ demonstration announced aiming to ‘Bring back Morsi’; one of those demonstrations is in the neighborhood of my office, in Gameat El Dowal El Arabia Street, intersection Shehab. They shrank from about 1500 participants 2 months ago, to 60 people about 5 weeks ago down to literally a dozen, just last week, even after ‘president’ Morsi who obviously had instructed his son, had him spread the message of ‘Victory for justice I will be back’..

What took me by surprise and has me seen what I’d call a shoot of a sign that ‘change has begun’ is when the Ministry of Interior, namely the general prosecutor on October 22nd ordered the detention of 4 officers who were responsible for the tragic death of 37 prisoners who tried to escape a police-van and who had been suffocated with thrown in tear-gas canisters. If holding the officers accountable has been just the beginning of showing respect to the citizens through not permitting double standards, then the government will get the trust from their people in return that is crucial to built a state in which all of its members feel a sense of responsibility for their actions, and for each other.

Regarding manipulating facts using the media: this seems graver to me than any other issue for it so affects the national mood with bounce-off effects abroad: I believe this could be solved with one measure that had gotten lost on the way.

What prevents the government from eventually realizing the ‘media rules of conduct’? Frequently some repressive ‘ban’-ideas on certain topics pop up or one hears about a muzzle at whose worse end one only imagine to find claqueurs for the ‘magnificent government’. Why not make every journalist accountable for misreporting, exaggeration and distortion, summon him/her to a public televised defense where a team, subjected to rotation, will provide validated facts and ‘grill them’ over their blurring views?- Take a moment to let this sink in. Please. I am making a plea to leave journalistic ethics not being subjected to random occurrence, regretfully mainly the case in the West, but to establish the code of ethics on a broad scale and in addition open the gates for the possibility of investigative journalism, which is not possible yet, since governmental authorities won’t allow access to certain information unless one is legally eligible. Simple follow ups on key-issues never had a chance to be carried out, since obtaining information on certain issues was legally not possible.

All of this sure would come close to perfection, when, in the same time an independent office would keep record and publish both: the original report and the disclaimers backed up with fact-sheets. These reports should be amenable online and in hard-copies.

If that, what I think is possible to put through with civil forces I reckon: Egypt has a bright future real fast. Think about the role-model character especially the media-conduct approach would send to the countries of the ‘free’ western world, where the media in the meantime mainly serve to promote preconceived ideas and product placement. ‘Being informative’ is the image they still carry and is being enforced by random highlights once in a while. Egypt has shown the world what legitimacy really means. It gave back meaning to the gaping void of the word democracy. The people of Egypt brought back the full capacity of the term.

If that, what I think is not possible to be put through with civil forces since they can’t built enough authority to get rid of fact twisters, if indeed, as some already speculate, it should require the authority of the army .. then.. Be it.-

Despite the numerous statements made by General Sisi himself where he stressed he would not be at disposal for the presidential seat and despite statements by members of the government, the last one recently on Sky, where El-Beblawi said that Egypt would not be militarized since ‘the main gains of the revolution of January 25th had been to end the concept of a military state’ and moreover that the army sees its in its own best interest that a military state would harm Egypt, stressing the importance and nobility of the Egyptian army, yet leaving no doubt that their agenda is ‘back to securing the borders’, where the army sees their main activity, El-Bablawi almost seems to beg the Egyptians to understand that for the army ‘getting involved into politics’ means losing focus on their main mission. – The calls for Sisi are getting louder. If Egypt had free and international monitored elections tomorrow, he would get probably 85% of the votes with a minimum turn-out of 75%. And the election observers would keep wondering: how the hell did they rig this??

The way I see it: if the public pressure grows, if people try harder to push General Sisi into presidency since they see currently no alternative to Sisi: he should then not insist to stay with his principles and not make a point to keep his promise. Too much is at stake to risk losing Egypt again and leave fate to decide the course of the country. Both revolutions have shown clearly: the so called ‘people in the streets’ have an excellent sense of assessing the greater picture. They have a sharp mind and some have in addition a profound understanding of politics. The recent past has delivered proof.

General Sisi has proofed that he is a statesman, wise enough to select competent personnel; modest enough to keep in the background, devoted enough to leave his comfortable life and expose himself to public criticism, as happens with everybody who occupies the interests and stirs the curiosity of the people. Did he complain? No. Why not? I think the simple truth is: he doesn’t care. He has no time to care. I personally don’t think he even likes the idea of being i.e. displayed on chocolate pralines. It might even have irritated him. Or take the story with the dressed up donkey! I don’t think he felt offended. He is above and beyond petty-minded mockery. The only reason why I wouldn’t ‘want’ to see him becoming the president of Egypt is because of the people who would try to harm him if not worse.

As ‘things’ are in Egypt, I personally see no contradiction in having Sisi as president for a while, until the country has regained some stability and has the chance to accumulate institutional structures.

If Sisi would become president of Egypt than Egypt would become the first country that would be ruled by an army chief whose main aim were to prepare the country for democracy.-

In a world of deceit it takes courage to trust.- .. the strengths of the man’s gentleness and thereness precedes his promises.

Always remember:

‘All breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs.’ ~

A Recollection of The Second Stage of The Egyptian Revolution I / First Phase / 2

On October 13, 2013October 22, 2013 By davb.deIn The Evolving RevolutionLeave a comment

Well as I said: there had been more to it.-

Remembering the strikes in Mahalla since 2006, a province town with a governmental textile-factory where about 20.000 plus workers who, I learned to my surprise, had an active workers union, urged for better labor conditions! Then there had been Kifaya!! A grass-root pressure group that genuinely grew out of a broader dissatisfaction with ‘where things go in Egypt’. They started in the early 2000’s behind closed doors, went viral in 2004 and gained momentum in 2005. The eyes of the politically awakening people in my professional environment sparkled with enthusiasm when they started to talk about ‘Kifaya’. Apparently for the first time since the 1952 revolution the people of Egypt again felt they had a voice.

Kifaya means ‘enough’. The voice cried for change.-

What did the people of Egypt wanted to change? You can read about Kifaya in Google. Numerous websites provide a very accurate picture, what Kifaya had, and, my personal view, always will be about, until the major demand of the January 25^th revolution, namely social justice, will be met.

Back then I did understand that it was about an increasing discomfort between the rich and their privileges and the working poor.

To name but a few issues: Public schools were free, but in such a deteriorated and wretched condition that everyone who could afford, would sacrifice for sending his children to a private school as they were mushrooming since the early 90’ies. Housing was another key-problem. You simply couldn’t afford to buy a flat, a prerequisite for leaving your parents home and getting married on reasons of tradition. If you were working in a low-wage job, which constituted and still counts for the overwhelming majority of jobs, getting married was, for a majority of people subjected to waiting for a miracle. Corruption! I could never really see it that way! Knowing what families were expected to represent and what it took to just stay alive and keep going.. taking bribes, or to phrase it politely, asking for commission, had been, in my view, only a somewhat reasonable way ‘to make ends meet’. But as sure as Egypt is the Mother-Of-The-World: some civil ‘servants’ from the upper end of the food chain really made ‘corruption’ sound like a nickname. – However not all governmental employees took bribes. Most public-sector servants had a side-business or a second job.

Among cab-drivers one would find rather often either accountants or teachers; like i.e. in Germany where numerous university graduates from social and political science could be found driving cabs since there were no jobs for them. Only: in Egypt most cab-drivers had their morning shifts in offices or governmental bureaus.

Public schools were and still are ‘something’ that can only make one feel torn between irritation and heartbreak. Thinking to reform the whole surrounding of the complex issue leaves you asking: where to begin? Next to that the school-classes are overcrowded to minimize the facts, and that of course neither the buildings themselves, nor the equipment nor the curriculum are anywhere close to make a child looking forward to go to school, where could all the money be allocated from to improve the base necessities? As well the teachers had a disgracing salary, which lead some teachers to despair but the majority to give private classes; this way they secure themselves and their families a living.

The dynamics of the Egyptian property market should outsmart every seasoned gross-economist. If you expect to find a reliable prediction-tool to assess the economical capability of the citizens, think again. There is no balanced relation between property prices and average income.

And so it goes on..

Anyway. Back to the lounge. In the meantime I had grabbed myself another cup of coffee and was glued to the plasma-screen “BBC-World-live”, now showing what looked like thousands of people, running away from policemen, vehicles from central security forces rolling through the streets, water cans and what looked like tires set on fire.. Journalists seemed puzzled while reporting about the demonstrations. Most of their sentences ended up in question marks. Meanwhile all over Cairo and in all major cities of Egypt one learned about overwhelming chaos that emerged literally everywhere and that dominated the scenes. HELL seemed to have broken loose!! Who would not have had a hard time reporting with accuracy what had been going on? The facts were still confusing.

I lost my appetite for the buffet and sat down. I absolutely didn’t know what to make of all this. Now I started to understand why the flight would probably be postponed. Egypt was obviously under a kind of state-of-emergency.

Before I had to start worrying about where best to get lost in London, an electronically distorted voice on the speakers rang out “passengers for flight MS 778, Egypt Air, please ..”

So it wasn’t that bad after all.. what a relief. Things might look bad in Egypt from the outside but probably the media seemed to make it worse than it actually was.

I got ready, left the lounge and made my way to the departure gate, where boarding had already started. The seat-neighbor from Monday recognized me as well and immediately started the “I told you so” thread; we tried to make jokes but it was one of those moments, where reality requested full attention. He received contradictory information through his cell-phone – some claimed the internet in Egypt was shut-off and some said it works fine. We promised each other to keep together.

All other passengers as far as I was aware of them, appeared to be somewhat clouded, mood wise, but otherwise occupied with their routine in response to boarding.

About three and a half hours later, above Greece, suddenly a male voice sounded over the speakers: “Ladies and Gentlemen. This is your Captain speaking. We apologize for the inconvenience. We shall have to land unscheduled in Athens in a few minutes time. Please take all your belongings with you. Do not leave any of your hand-baggage in the plane…”

To cut it short: Egypt hadn’t closed its air-space yet, that’s what I thought, but we had a bomb threat, as one of the cabin-stewards had let us know.

We all left the plane and were informed that we would continue our flight later this day. After having waited for approximately 5 hours in front of TV-screens, we were trying to grasp the background on how the situation had deteriorated. Egypt was now live-covered, disrupted only through advertisement-clips. What had started on January 25^th as a huge demonstration called ‘Day of Revolt’ for democracy, dignity and social justice had developed into a mass-uprising with the slogan ‘Friday of Anger’ – the first people got killed in the riots and thereafter fury run the rage in the streets.

Oh Egypt..

We had been called upon eventually to check into the airport-hotel. Tourists who were on the flight had been offered to go back to their home countries. I don’t remember how serious some of them considered the offer, but I mind gamed about how I would decide. I couldn’t Continue reading “A Recollection of The Second Stage of The Egyptian Revolution I / First Phase / 2” →

A Recollection of The Second Stage of The Egyptian Revolution I / First Phase / 1

On October 11, 2013October 22, 2013 By davb.deIn The Evolving RevolutionLeave a comment

London, Heathrow – Business-Class Lounge, 28th January 2011

First Phase

“Excuse me Miss,” I turned to the reception desk, “how come the flight to Cairo hasn’t been announced for boarding yet? Aren’t we due?” Checking on her computer screen the receptionist replied ”We don’t know whether the plane will go there today.” Somewhat startled I dumbly asked “What do you mean ‘We don’t know whether the plane goes to Cairo’”? – “There are some disturbances. Just go back inside the lounge. We’ll inform you as soon as we have more information.”

I was slightly irritated and went back. Suddenly my attention was drawn to the huge plasma-screen and I needed a few seconds to realize that the pictures about a burning place with fire, armed soldiers shooting and people running around I was looking at had been our Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. – Oh no. Please, dear Lord, let that not be true! ..

On my way to London on January 24^th I had been sitting next to a business man from Mohandeseen with an engineering consultancy office. We came to talk about this and that, and as well we pondered about the possibility what ‘the demonstration’, which had been in the air for a few weeks now, will bring about. From him I learned that emails had been send to raise awareness and ensure participation!

That was new to me. I learned about it through my microcosmic office, all the young people were fantasying about a ‘revolution’ and were very enthusiastic about 25^th January, when a big demonstration should take place. The specific date had been chosen as it was a day to celebrate the police, officially ‘National Police Day’.

Would make sense, is what I thought. But of course: I didn’t believe it would ever come to that.

So when my seat-neighbor told me about the bulk of emails he had all received I thought ‘So even the establishment?’ since he obviously belonged to the upper class; he had the means to pay for business-class, wore stylish and expensive shoes, his whole out-fit and appearance left no doubt about his privileged, social status.

So I got the idea, that I certainly should try my best to get a glance at the news the next day. –

Thinking about that a real demonstration could take place in Cairo, a mass-demonstration, the kind I was used to back then in Berlin, where ten to twenty thousand people took to the streets in the 80-ies, was an outlandish idea. But..

The youth is always rebellious and overambitious. I myself know that oh so well. I had been so young myself. I even, at a certain point of political activism in Germany, … I was willing to die for a course!! Well..

As for the Egyptian youth who brought the mass-demonstration idea to my screen in August and with increasing fervor in late September 2010 I thought of it as ‘something, one might should have to go through’ – but left the matter otherwise aside. After all: nothing really was hinting at the possibility of the demonstration becoming ‘talk-of-the-town’, all I personally expected was disruption and people staying at home since they would be scared. The daily life went on taking all the energy to get things going, people went places, got married, went to parties and worried about to upgrade from i-phone 4 to i-phone 4S. Besides, the ‘girls’ (in their 20ies) never really spoke about what they would demonstrate against. A few weak remarks here and there.

I was thinking what could possibly be behind?

Still the Gamal Mubarak succession question seemed to absorb some; I thought the question was already settled since it vanished from small-talk. Remind you: Mubarak, in dire need to present a successor since his poor state of health started to trigger speculations about ‘Who would do the job if the old man dies?’. Yet it seemed to me that Mubarak realized that literally nobody in Egypt would support his son. Numerous discussions and debates had been held about the matter secretly and openly. Someone said about freedom of speech in Egypt in the late 2000’s ‘You can talk about anything, but we don’t have freedom of speech.’

He had a point. Some journalists got arrested ‘for spreading false rumors’ about Hosni Mubarak’s state of health.

So yes. The expectation from the side of the Egyptian people to be presented with a successor was all so comprehensible. After all, Mubarak did not have a vice president and facts about his cancer leaked and started to worry the political decision-makers and the business community.

As well: as of 2005 a growing public discontent with the reign of the Mubarak government spread through the country. Hardly anybody with intellectual standing, who was involved and exposed to the community of normal citizens, withhold at times and according to their temper rather angry insults and accusations against president Hosni Mubarak.

All I could think then was: why are you so fiercely opposing a government that brings increasing prosperity to a vast majority, as I saw it, to the country? New jobs, great salaries, admirable projects like ‘Smart Village’ mushroomed within a comparatively short time. As of the early 2000’s the streets of Cairo had more and more posh shops opening, elegant offices, a lot of new buildings, household good could be purchased with installments so people had air-conditions, new cars and every new season a new mobile. There were times, when my staff had better mobiles than I myself! Travelling abroad seemed to have become a casual summer pass-time. So in my logic I thought: the better things become the more aggressive people get, since they discover that what they already have isn’t enough..

Yet: there was more to it.

Karina Loren

Tag: Jan25

The Future Has Begun

Water does not flow through the same riverbed twice

“Integrity is the Ability to Stand by an Idea”

To Whose Benefit?

The Villain, the Hero and the Hypocrite

“God only knows the pain in our souls”

Purifying Mistaken Notions of Reality

Drifting from an Utopian Dream toward Reality

A Recollection of The Second Stage of The Egyptian Revolution I / First Phase / 2

A Recollection of The Second Stage of The Egyptian Revolution I / First Phase / 1

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