It being (Western tradition) Advent, I thought a suitably Xmas themed post might be in order (and it serves as an opportunity for me to express my delight in Abyssinian Church art). I think this is lovely:
Honestly, I shall be posting some more serious stuff later, but I am a bit preoccupied at the moment.
For those keen on iconography, note the Benediction given by the Infant Christ. The hand gesture is similar to that demanded by Old Believers in Russia.
Just to let viewers know that having settled into a new location, I am now resuming normal (?) services. Still looking for work, though.
Useless information: the pronoun “them” is actually from Old Norse. Southern dialect Old and Middle English used the word “hem”… the expression “Up and at ‘em” may be a remnant of that usage… Londoners never being very good wiv their ‘aitches…
Cort blimey, g’vnor, strike a bleedin’ light.
Any offers of employment inside or outside the education sector would be gratefully received.
I am working for a certifiable lunatic who has now taken to threatening the lives of my wife and children.
We need to get out now. This is no joke.
The land around El Obeid, the principle town of the vast Sudanese province of Kordofan is largely a rock desert of acacias, baobab trees and scrub. From out of this landscape tower gigantic isolated tors. I love the desert there and once saw a flock of ostriches charging across the horizon to the sound of the yelping of jackals.
This is the place my wife is from, her home. Where the village grows up around the baobab tree and it itself is home to the local jinn who direct the fortunes of the people below. Women, until very recently, often went about semi-naked, with no rules about covering breasts or hair. Islam was more or less a veneer and new articulation of far older, indeed age-old things. Iron workers regarded with awe and as invested with magic, shuyukh mixing up spells and making talismans, the call to prayer comes, is answered and the village jinn are also in their turn propitiated.
Within the last few generations many of my wife’s tribe have settled down. Some still migrate around the desert with their flocks of camels and sheep in search of water and fodder, but they are fewer. Supposedly we own camels, my wife and I – or at least we should be able to redeem some from their owner, a relative, should we wish to get into the nomadic camel herding life… which is always an option, I suppose.
El Obeid district, Kordofan province, Sudan
Cornelius Cardew was one of the most important British composers of the 20th Century. He was a committed revolutionary. He died tragically young, 30 years ago.
For Cde Brian:
Despite all evidence that the now-defunct Egyptian National Democratic Party, the ruling party during the Mubarak Era, was little more than the polite face of the dictatorship, the NDP became a member of the Socialist International in June 1989, at the XVIII Congress held in Stockholm. The Socialist International has ingenious reasons why it ever allowed admission to a sockpuppet party of a gang of murderers and thieves hell-bent on stealing every last thing not nailed down in Egypt:
This decision was based upon the desire of the Socialist International to build a partnership with your organisation in the search for peace and security in that region of the world, so crucial to global stability. The International, as a movement for peace, recognised in this decision the will of the NDP and its leadership to sincerely engage in this quest, as has indeed been evident over the last thirty years.
Along with this, the Socialist International wanted to encourage the development of multi-party democracy in Egypt by expanding relationships in that part of the world, as democracy is for our movement a fundamental pillar upon which to secure the rights and freedoms of our citizens and to achieve social and economic progress.
So, let us get this right: the Socialist International will let any gang of crooks and thugs join just in case they mouth words of peace and love towards others. The reference to “the will of the NDP and its leadership to sincerely engage in this quest, as has indeed been evident over the last thirty years” is telling. The phrase is drawn from the SI‘s letter of January 2011 to the General Secretary of Mubarak’s vanity party, informing him of the SI decision to expel the NDP from the International. Readers will, of course, notice that 30 years is exactly the amount of time Mubarak was in office. Even in expelling the NDP, SI could not help praise the old crook, Mubarak himself!
If that was not insulting enough for the millions of ordinary Egyptians who had to live under the repression and fraud of the previous 30 years of Mubarak’s rule, SI goes on to sing the praises of the utterly false and superficial “democratic” changes that seemingly occurred under Mubarak’s rule. Whilst fretting over the lack of progress to introduce adequate democratic features to Egyptian society, SI found it within their hearts to comment on:
the hopeful moments which had arisen during the 80s and led to membership of the NDP in the SI and then again in the mid- 2000s when a measure of important internal changes had taken place within the NDP.
So, for SI one of the measures of increased democracy was that NDP officials were not overtly appointed by Mubarak and his clique after a while (well, actually, they were), but had to go through a show of “democracy” before taking up those sinecures and roles in the party apparatus of the NDP. Don’t you feel democracy is safe in the hands of the ever vigilent SI?
Even when SI got cold-feet about associating themselves with one of the most anti-democratic, corrupt and murderous regimes in the entire MENA region, their reasons for the expulsion of the Egyptian NDP were despicable:
The current massive calls being made today by the citizens of Egypt for freedoms and rights point to the dramatic failure of the Egyptian government to deliver to its people and to the failings of the NDP to live up to its promises. The use of violence, with scores dead and injured, is totally incompatible with the policies and principles of any social democratic party anywhere in the world.
A gathering of members of a fully functioning social democratic party
Failure of the government to deliver and failings of the NDP to live up to its promises? Are the SI right in their collective head? The NDP were the “party” of a narrow clique of technocrats, secret policemen and family friends and relations that surrounded the Mubarak clan. The promises made were to this gang of thugs, thieves and murderers – not to the Egyptian people – and on these promises the regime certainly delivered (quite a sizable share of Egypt’s GDP, in point of fact, straight into overseas accounts).
The final sentence of the above speaks volumes for the SI’s rank opportunism” SI had not noticed the use of violence, leaving scores dead and injured, on the part of the Mubarak dictatorship before the January Revolution? Presumably, then, despite all evidence from international human rights organisations, these acts of state terror were compatible with the policies and principles of social democracy?
I ask, because SI seemed quite happy to have the Egyptian NDP Mubarak Party as one of their fold whilst such things went on in Egypt as electoral fraud, massive corruption, illegal arrest and detention, Emergency Rule by the dictatorship, secret service surveillance of the population, dissappearing of political opponents… oh, you know, all the other things generally accepted as being out of kilter with the policies and principles of social democracy. Only when the People rose did the Socialist International change its mind and declare the NDP to be beyond the pale.
Having been caught in bed, snuggled up to a regional dictator, the Socialist International have been keen to distance themselves from the military junta in Egypt, although again in terms so vague that one wonders whether they are just going through the motions. Earlier this month (after remaining almost completely silent on Egypt for the previous months), SI roused itself to issue the following statement:
In response to the escalating crisis, Socialist International is deeply concerned by the situation in Egypt and condemns the repressive methods being used by the Egyptian ruling military against civilian protesters. We have been hoping, as have all Egyptians, to see a new democratic Egypt. As yet, this hope has not become a reality. We stand in solidarity with the Egyptian people who want a swift and peaceful transition to democracy. A fairly elected civilian government should be in place as soon as possible to enable Egypt to move forward as a fully-fledged democratic state.
The statement is full of the usual verbiage from SI about governments breaking promises and not delivering. At least they are siding with the demand that the SCAF junta should go; but given their previous craven support right up to the bitter end for the party of the Mubarak dictatorship, exactly how seriously should Egyptians take SI promises to deliver on anything?
Presently, there are no Egyptian parties that are members, full or otherwise, nor observers of the Socialist International. They cannot be blamed for that, surely.
LabourStart is an online news service maintained by a global network of volunteers which aims to serve the international trade union movement by collecting and disseminating information — and by assisting unions in campaigning and other ways.
So says the blurb, and I believe them. Especially when they organise and campaign for the rights of Egyptian workers. Labourstart point out:
The Egyptian revolution earlier this year provided an inspiring glimmer of hope to finally allow workers to form and join independent and democratic trade unions. But this is under threat. The interim government has passed a decree banning strikes, and is yet to pass a labour law guaranteeing workers their rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining in accordance with international labour standards. Such a law would allow Egyptian workers to have a real say in tackling the low wages and abysmal working conditions they face, and hold their government to account.
Labourstart, together with the International Trade Union Confederation are asking readers to bombard the Egyptian state by messaging the regime in Egypt (aka the generals in the Junta) to pass a labour law now.
Amira Nowaira has an excellent article on Comment is Free that calls attention to the growing disenchantment with the Muslim Brotherhood on the Egyptian Street:
As the brutal crackdown against peaceful protesters in Cairo and several other Egyptian cities continued unabated for six days running, the Muslim Brotherhood stayed out of the fray, declaring clearly that it would not join the protests.
In deciding to stay away from these protests, the Brotherhood may have committed its gravest mistake to date. The footage showing a dead protester being dragged by a security officer and dumped near a rubbish heap, appearing on many satellite channels and the internet, has not only shocked and enraged Egyptians, but it has sent them out on to the streets in their thousands to protest against this outrage.
In going out they had no political calculations in mind and no gains to make. They simply wanted their voices to be heard. By staying away, the Brotherhood has sent the message that it rated its self-interest higher than Egyptian blood and its decision has angered many Egyptians, including some of its own members.
While this highlights the rift that has been growing over the past few months between the Brotherhood and a significant segment of the population, it also brings to light the various challenges facing the Brotherhood since the overthrow of Mubarak.
Berchmans is not amused. Naturally. Some people in the comments said nasty things about Shameless’ recent adulation of MB…
One of the imperative tasks of all progressives in the MENA region is to break down the walls of hate, fear and misconception that haunt the Arab world about Israel and the Jewish people. Getting people to talk to another is a great way of doing this.
This is exactly what the Friend-a-Soldier site does. Discharged Israeli soldiers and Reservists ask us to take their challenge:
Take our challenge – Ask us anything…
We are discharged Israeli soldiers and Reservists who seek to forge personal connections with our neighbors in order to foster mutual understanding and pave the way for a lasting peace. Regardless of your background or political beliefs, we invite you to come talk to us about any topic, no holds barred. Those who begin a correspondence will receive an answer straight to their email inbox.
The questions come in from all across the Arabic-speaking world. Some are more pointed and argumentative than others. Together with the responses of the Israel ex soldiers and Reservists, they make up a fascinating window into the region and its actors, as well as augmenting the struggle for peace and understanding.
Behind every uniform is a human being.
Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer has an excellent piece up on the new revolutionary wave in Egypt and the growing disenchantment and anger with the Muslim Brotherhood and Army hijackers of the Revolution amongst Egyptians, who go to the polls on Monday and Tuesday (now with extended voting!) in the first round of elections:
CAIRO – “I feel like we fell asleep 10 months ago, and now we woke up and nothing has changed,” said Ahmad Atta, a 31-year-old computer teacher, expressing the thoughts of the tens of the thousands of Egyptians streaming into Cairo’s Tahrir Square even at 2 A.M. on a Thursday. On one of the side streets, the young people trying to stop the police from retaking control of the square were unwittingly shouting a slogan from the Spanish Civil War: “They shall not pass.”
Police and army answer calls for democracy with gas attack on demonstrators
In the center of the square was a carnival atmosphere, with Egyptians of all ages milling around among the hundreds of food vendors. A large group walked around the square shouting “The people demand an end to the bloodshed” and, “In peaceful ways.” A few hundred meters away, on one of the streets leading to the square, hundreds of young people had already prepared Molotov cocktails to lob at the police lined up between the square and the symbol of their control, the Interior Ministry building.
H/T Gene of HP
I often feel like this…
Eat your heart out, punk rock.
Oh, but then I come over all X-Ray Spex (a song by Sweet, incidentally):
X-Ray Spex were a wonderful, shambling, musical mess of rebellion, fashion and fun. Main muse Poly Styrene danced, yelped, screamed and sang over the joyful noise belted out by her punchy buzzsaw’n’biscuit-tin band while fighting off Laura Logic’s sax honks from stage left – all with a smile of pure glee.
My kind of people…
The I start sobering up a bit. Recall the Pop Group:
“To wash your hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means you are taking sides with the oppressor”
They would have liked this:
Gawd, I’m getting old…
I thought I would raise the good nature of this blog by mentioning the wonderful blogger, babbazee. This is a name-check for one of the wittiest and cleverest bloggers out there.
בעזרת השם, bizrat Hashem, we might one day meet. I should love to treat her to some proper lemon soup and molokhia… insh’allah…
Molokhia is a member of the Jute family. Ancient Egyptians were canny people. With an entire Pyramid building society premised on an annually flooded strip of land in the middle of a desert, one had best grow things that have many uses. One could use the leaves to eat; the stalks to pound into fibre to make clothes and ropes; and the stems at the end of the season as kindling, thus saving on the precious little wood one had.
Molokhia, for those who have not tasted it, is like a cross between a kale and spinach. It cooks down to a sort of gloopy, dark green consistency with bits of leaf stuff. I like it. So do lots of other people, so there.
A variation is to make the dish with rabbit stock and meat… or pigeons… in fact any meat one might be lucky enough to lay one’s hands on. I shall be writing about pigeons, their wonderful conical lofts, their place in Egyptian rural life and one of the most barbaric acts ever committed by the British Empire – one that sparked a national movement – shortly…
This is a definitely good recipe for Molokhia (if you can get it – it does come minced and frozen, much as spinach often does):
Ingredients
Steps
The ever excellent Gene on Harry’s Place draws our attention to this wonderful and important article up on Ha’aretz:
CAIRO – “We want a democracy like in Israel.” I heard this sentence twice in January, once in a shopping center in Tunis and a second time on a street near Tahrir Square in Cairo. When I tell people that neither of the men who said this to me were aware of my being a reporter for an Israeli newspaper, I am usually greeted with disbelief.
I would give you their names, but they are in two different notebooks buried somewhere in a stack back home. So you can choose whether you want to take my word for it. Not only were they not aware of my Israeli identity, but the young Tunisian man, an Islamist in the local laid-back fashion, after extolling Israeli democracy, immediately launched into a tirade against the Jewish state’s treatment of the Palestinians.
Until these latter limitations and reservations are overcome, however – I will continue to hold my breath.
Egypt’s Naked Blogger, Aliya’a Magda el-Mahdi is at it again. Irrepressible, despite being recently beaten senseless by the fascist scum of the armed forces and police in Tahrir Square, she has now launched a new campaign, calling on men to don the hijab:
An Egyptian blogger who sparked controversy last week by posting a photo of herself naked online has also launched a campaign calling on men to don the Islamic headscarf.
However, the Facebook campaign, launched by Aliaa Elmahdy in support of women’s rights, was shut down after it was hit by thousands of complaints last week. Elmahdy plans to relaunch it within days [...]
Her reasons for launching the Facebook project, “Wearing Hijab in Solidarity with Women,” which kicked off on November 1, are similar. She says she started the project because “many people deny that the hijab discriminates between women and men.”
A statement posted on the group’s Arabic-language Facebook page before the page was removed said that “Those who call on women to wear hijab should not attack men if they chose to wear the hijab” and calls on men to upload their photos.
Show your support for this campaign by sending me pictures of yourself either naked or in hijab – or both…
UPDATE
Sarka, over on Harry’s Place, reminds me:
A year or so back there was an Iranian Facebook campaign of men sending photos of themselves as a way of supporting women’s rights not to wear it…This absolutely scandalised the authorities…didn’t come to much though, alas. Here are some babelicious examples of veiled men.
babelicious Iranian dudes
Guy Debord sez...
One of the more disturbing features of the recent upsurge in the Revolution has been the strange combination of desperate street fighting and the normalcy of life going on otherwise around the scenes of these courageous battles against the thugs and murderers of the military junta. Aisha Hussein comments from Cairo:
I got a message on Sunday that the Tahrir Square field hospital needed medical help and supplies. As I used to be a nurse, I went. The tear gas is toxic in a way it was not in January. Various people have said that the cyanide component is greater or that phosphorus is causing the problem. I can positively confirm that the gas injuries are completely different and much more severe. We treated hundreds of youngsters who had totally collapsed and were not breathing. Most came to quickly but we had two deaths and one, a young boy, asphyxiated. This evening, every gas victim has come in twitching or seriously fitting. Some gas wafted into the mosque. You couldn’t see it but immediately my eyes began to stream and my skin started to burn. In the January Revolution, I saw the gas coming and the effects irritated my eyes, nose and throat. The eye irritation was intense but this is different. I never had a sense of my skin burning in January even with close range exposure.
On the first day, we had multiple gun shot wounds as well as gassings; one young man was dead by the time the hospital gurney came. As far as I know he was killed by multipled wounds from rubber bullets. Another young man had an entry and exit wound from a bullet in his ankle which I don’t think could have been a rubber bullet. The small metal pellets in rubber bullets (or bean bag rounds) don’t tend to lodge in the flesh, but they can do. Sometimes they can be removed with forceps but sometimes the doctors have to cut in to get them out. Most of those cases are taken to hospital.
There have been a few fractures and head wounds. One young woman, who may have had a history of psychiatric illness, who knows, was catatonic when brought in and then came to and screamed and thrashed, smacking her head against a wall so badly she needed several stitches, which was only possible after she’d been given IV sedation.
Many of the staff are traumatised, weeping in corners or losing control and screaming and shouting. A lot of the younger doctors and medical students have had no experience at all to help them cope with what they are facing. We don’t have much of a problem with supplies: stuff runs short but people are donating everywhere. Even if they cannot come to the square they are giving money and aid. We are fed and watered in the mosque; volunteers, sometimes the staff themselves, circulate with snacks and drinks and there is an on-going cleaning and clearing effort.
The mood in the square is dangerous. People are angry in a different way, me included: all that was given and sacrificed, including so many young lives, seems to have been for nothing, and that is just not bearable. I cannot imagine how and where it will end. Yet all over Cairo life continues as if nothing is happening.
Effendi has a very good piece up on Al Spittoon concerning the beating and sexual assault of Mouna in Cairo.
My right hand is so swollen I can’t close it.
5 or 6 surrounded me, groped and prodded my breasts, grabbed my genital area and I lost count how many hands tried to get into my trousers.
They are dogs and their bosses are dogs. Fuck the Egyptian police.
Yes sexual assault. I’m so used to saying harassment but those fuckings assaulted me.
The past 12 hrs were painful and surreal but I know I got off much much easier than so many other Egyptians.
God knows what wuld’ve happened if I wasn’t dual citizen (tho they brought up detained US students) & that I wrote/appeared various media.
The whole time I was thinking about article I would write; just you fuckers wait.
When I am not writing here, I am mostly to be found on the ever excellent Harry’s Place. Of late, I have also been infesting the forum of the Council of Ex-Muslims, here.
Maryam Namazie is a woman of enormous courage and energy who has recently blogged extensively about Aliya’a Magda el-Mahdy‘s extraordinary assault on the medieval mindset of too many in Egypt. I thought it might be useful to indicate, as a sort of roundup of Maryam’s comments on the same, links to Maryam’s recent comments:
Here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
There is also this fantastic article by Mouna El-Tahawy in a recent edition of The Guardian, which is a must read. Mouna has now been subjected to a sexual assault and beating by the semi-fascist thugs that presently are in charge in Egypt.
I was immensely impressed by this comment left on the forum of the CEMB by Hassan:
I was shocked when I first saw the photo (I was brought up with fairly conservative values regarding sex and nudity by both my Egyptian father and English mother despite growing up in the west – not to mention all the years I was a devout Muslim) – and although I supported Aliaa I expressed doubts about whether this was the right way to do things and concerns that in a climate in Egypt where liberals are in a battle with the Islamists it would weaken potential support.
I was wrong to add any “ifs and buts” and I wholeheartedly support her.
If her nudity shocks me and makes me feel a bit uncomfortable – that’s my problem – not Aliaa’s.
The whole point was clearly meant to make people feel uncomfortable, it was meant to provoke, it was meant to be a kick in the balls of a deeply misogynistic and sexually hypocritical society.
Worrying about whether it will alienate some was not Aliaa’s concern – and rightly so – her action was meant to shake everyone and has already achieved more overnight than years of softly softly bending over backwards.
Be true to yourself whether others like it or not – it is the only way things really change.
As Maryam says it doesn’t matter what form the protest takes. Nor does it matter a fig if it’s something *I* personally wouldn’t do – no-one is asking me to!!!
We badly need amazingly brave people like Aliaa – and my God anyone who knows what Egyptian society is like will know how she brave she is – to push the boundaries for the less brave (like myself).
I don’t always agree with Daniel Greenfield, but I think this article is thought provoking.
The left’s worst crime in the Middle East has been its support for the region’s Arab-Muslim majority at the expense of its minorities. It has supported the majority’s terrorism, atrocities, ethnic cleansing and repression of the region’s minorities. Very rarely has it raised a voice in their support, and when it has done so, it was in muted tones completely different from their vigorous defenses of the nationalism of the Arab Muslim majority.
The left is obsessed with the Arab Spring, which rewards the ambitions of Arabist and Islamist activists at the expense of Coptic, African, and other minorities.
It is dementedly fixated on statehood for the Arab Muslims of Israel, (better known by their local Palestinian brand), but has little to say about the Kurds in Turkey or the Azeri in Iran. The million Jewish refugees and the vanishing Christians of the region never come up in conversation. They certainly don’t get their own protest rallies or flotillas.
Inspired by the naked Egyptian activist, Aliya’a Magda el-Mahdi, a 28 years-old Israeli woman has opened a Facebook page inviting women “to show support in a non-violent and legitimate way for a woman who is just like us – young, ambitious, full of dreams and evidently has a developed sense of humour.”
These 40 Israeli women agree:
Girls, let’s give the world a good reason to see the unique beauty of Israeli women. Regardless of whether they are Jewish, Arab, straight or Lesbian – because here, as of now, it doesn’t matter. (…) Let us show the doubters that our international discourse doesn’t depend on governments.
So writes Or Tepler, the Israeli activist behind this online event. She argues:
When a liberal, enlightened woman in Cairo cannot express herself and gets threats from her state, we should show solidarity.
For more information, see here
I am usually very suspicious of organised religion, but if you are going to get down and worship a sky pixie, this is the way it should go:
Alaa Abd El Fattah was jailed for refusing to answer questions from an illegitimate military court on trumped up charges of incitement. Alaa’s case represents a far greater injustice — at least 12,000 Egyptian citizens have stood before a tribunal since the overthrow of Mubarak. Alaa’s mother is now on hunger strike.
Free Alaa Abd El Fattah and all political prisoners of the military junta now!
You will also find this enlightening, fascinating and moving. Egyptians:
This is a fascinating interview with the Egyptian revolutionary, Ahmad Salah. Salah, as usual, speaks hard, honest words about the future of the Revolution in Egypt:
But this is not the whole story.
I get on the tram. It costs 25 piastres for any distance along its ribbon course from one end of Alexandria to the other. Because it costs only 3p Sterling to travel any distance, nearly everyone else in the city gets on the tram. It is always packed. The ticket collector barges his way around the heaving mess of Coptic beauties, leering local lads, screaming kids, old battle axes with tons of inconveniently sized shopping. He holds in one hand a bunch of small bills and a pack of paper tickets. He will shout at you if you give him something bigger, he has better things to do than find the change for the 10 LE note you offer. There are, after all, 100 piastres to the single Egyptian Pound and has had enough of us today…
I tend to isolate myself by listening very loud to very rude punk. It seems fitting and makes a change from listening to the ticket collector telling another punter to fuck off with his 20 Pound note.
Stuff like this:
As I stand on my balcony, I can hear the crump of tear gas rounds and sporadic gunfire from the direction of Down Town in Alexandria.
The people demand the military stand down and stop firing on the people before it is too late.
I have proof that the West does not have the monopoly on the idiot Left. Behold! I present the Egyptian socialists and assorted revolutionaries. These horny handed sons of toil (mostly over video editing suites) present all the woes and ills of the Western Left. Yet what is overwhelmingly true of the Egyptian Left is the irritating observation that of all the Lefts that inhabit this little green globe, the Egyptian Left should be the most aware of the cretinous and cowardly character of much Leftist anti-imperialism… but they are not. O deary me, no.
Reading the screeds from the various Left parties and groups in Egypt is like reading Socialist Wanker and some Facebook account of a local Palestinian Solidarity Campaign translated, almost word for word, into Arabic. One fears the arrival of some sort of Egyptian Respect, full of crimp-faced worthy hijabi and loud-mouthed, bulldog sucking a bumble bee demogogues… and then one realises that much of the Egyptian Left is already exactly that.
Form red-brown alliances with local franchises of Islamist clerical fascism? 
The Egyptian Left are at it like a stoat in a bucket of kittens. They cannot get enough of coming over all warm and snuggly with Islamist factions that (let’s be honest) reject nearly every principle of even the laxest forms of socialism and believe that socialists and communists should and will burn in Hell. They will help them get there too (but only after the local idiot Left have stupidly elevated the Islamists into positions of power).
Assert ridiculous things like rejection of all foreign treaties assented to without plebiscite (when no country, with the possible exception of Switzerland, has ever operated foreign and diplomatic policy in such a manner) – and well should it be noted which foreign treaty the Egyptian Left has in mind.
Make loud and pompous statements calling for Egypt to flex her regional muscles and dominate. Feel meh authoriteh, O ye Cush, Syria and Judea. I am only suprised they do not promise to restart the programmes of pyramid building… but then I recall this would upset their Muslamic brethren in the anti-imperialist front, comrades.
Demand the immediate destruction of Israel/Zionist enemy/Jewish conspirators in the region. This can be wrapped up as a mild-mannered hankering for “a secular democratic single Palestinian state in which Jews and Muslims live side by side”. Or it can be asserted in terms more direct and absolute. Either way, the Egyptian Left make it very clear they think that Jews should be seen (at worst), but certainly not heard. Preferably neither.
Part of it is a desire to pump up the nationalism in Egypt. Every party is playing that card, though. Yet not every party is pumping up the anti-Zionist rhetoric other than the Islamists and their new friends on the so-called Left. For the Egyptian Left, the very existence of a local state of the Jews is very clearly responsible for nearly everything that has gone pear-shaped in the region since at least the reign of Tutmoses III. Loose battle to Hittite horde? It must be those Jews. Develop a corrupt police state out of a military dictatorship premised on hatred of the state of the Jews? Well, if they were not bloody there in the first place, we would not have reacted the way we did, would we?
The logic is impeccable, despicable and I despair.
Watching the Egyptian Left is like watching an unwitting man pick his own firing squad.
See here for excellent coverage of the issues presented above, especially pages on parties, alliances and movements.
I’ve been conversing with my old comrade Mao Zedong lately. Mao and I go back a long way. I first met him in my teens in the late ’70s. He gave me one of his badges, a big one with his smiling fizz on a bamboo-like background. I even had a Mao hat, courtesy of a family friend, an architect who had recently returned from the PRC, full of tales of the People’s Self Building and Barefoot Architecture for the Poor. The Chinese people, I was utterly convinced, had stood up.
Older now, I harbour some doubts about my beaming interlocutor, as he habitually wipes the top of his teacup with its porcelain lid and has a sip. I am not a great fan of Chinese tea, as it happens, but Mao informs me that his land is so egalitarian that he must pay for his own tea when he has visitors. I fret about the fact that the girl who served us tea is so young and stunning in her Red Guards get-up. Is Mao sleeping with her as well? The old goat.
Where the East is eternally Red is where Mao lives now; and getting there requires quite a few steps on a march of a thousand li. I have made this journey to ask him his opinions on a few matters. I am lucky he will see me. Usually all I get to visit is Zhao Enlai and sometimes, for a laugh, Sun Yatsen. At least Old Man Sun is more forthcoming. From others all I get is cryptic couplets, full of homophones: “Wind in the tower,” intoned Zhao, waving his arm, “herald of the coming storm.” I am meant to know his Classical references? What is this man talking about now?
I know in the Land of the Eternal People’s Communes and Great Leaps Forwards, Backwards and Sideways, Mao’s time is precious. So I cut to the chase:
“Comrade Helmsman of the Heavenly Kingdom, what do you make of the Egyptian Revolution?”
“You mean Nasser is still trying it on?”
Mao is a little slow this morning, I fear. he is very old. He giggles to himself and shakes his head, knowingly.
Then I realise he is making one of his recondite points:
“The Egyptian Revolution has no end. Until they realise that only New Democracy, not bourgeois democracy, will end their sufferings, the Revolution will continue to go around in circles.”
I think about this and then I counter:
“But, Comrade, Nasser abolished all the parties, established a leading party, communalised agriculture and made a state monopoly of the heights of industry…”
“All this?” Shouts Mao, interrupting. “All this? Not enough.”
“So, screw democracy, then?” I ask.
“Screw it, ‘New democracy’ is the beginning of the end of democracy.”
“But that is terrible,” I protest.
He smiles, and wipes the top of his teacup with its porcelain lid, sips, and carefully replaces the lid on top of its cup.
I wanted to write something clever, linking the music to the Egyptian Revolution – or some such twaddle. I cannot be arsed…
This one goes out for all my Ethiopian and Eritrean friends in exile. You shall return, not as prodigal sons, but as heroes…
H/T Alimeyu
Peeps, I have good reasons to be interested in the culture and future of the Roma people. I love this, as much for its cheap production values, not very PC factor and the fact that it is the sort of music I am keen on…
For David…
Opre Roma!
This, from Aliya’a's blog is fantastic:
Alec over at Harry’s Place alerts us to the following article on al-Arabiya’s English language site:
The Egyptian April 6 Youth Movement denied reports that a girl who posted nude pictures of herself on the internet has ties to the pro-democracy group but say that she is part of a conspiracy against them.
April 6 issued a statement, of which Al Arabiya obtained a copy, refuting allegations made by 20-year-old Aliaa al-Mahdy, who posted the nude pictures online on Tuesday, stating she is a member of the movement.
The group also denied the allegations on its page on social networking website Facebook.
“Lies have been circulating about an April 6 member called Aliaa al-Mahdy who posted her nude photos on the internet. This girl was never a member of the group.”
Al-Arabiya sense blood in the water, reporting Ms. al-Mahdi’s volte faces made in the light of her revolutionary nude photo shoot:
Mahdy claimed to be an April 6 member right after she posted the pictures, an action done to “defy restrictions on freedom,” as she put it. Her boyfriend Karim Amer also confirmed her membership of the group.
However, after the group’s statement, she denied having claimed any ties with the April 6 movement.“I am not and never was a member of April 6 and I have never claimed such a thing,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
She also reneged on earlier statements that the picture was taken at her boyfriend’s house.
“The picture was taken at my parents’ house,” her statement read.
Aha! So she is just an attention-seeking brazen hussy!
Or is she? Al-Arabiya’s copy is littered with loaded terms: she “reneged on earlier statements.” No, she changed her story.
Why? Well, the boyfriend’s house one is easy. The boyfriend was probably shitting it because his parents had found out about the spot of sports photography that had been going on when they were down the bingo and they had hit the veritable roof when they got home to find “Local harlot strips off in house for pleasure of wastrel son of local shopkeep” plastered all over the interweb. So she changed her story to protect him and his family from the vengeance of the local religious nutters, who would otherwise be seriously harassing his family.
Was she a member of April 6? Probably not. Who in their right minds would want to belong to a shower of craven, reactionary knobs who proudly proclaim that:
“The movement does not have any members who engage in such behavior and the girl is only an agent of State Security. They want to tarnish our image after our role during the revolution and the increasing support we get from the Egyptian people,” April 6 spokesman Tarek al-Kholi told Al Arabiya.
Kholi explained that membership in the group is not easy and is not done via registration on the internet.
“There are several procedures anyone who wants to join the group has to go through like submitting a membership form followed by an interview. After that, the applicant is informed whether the request is accepted or rejected.”
The movement, Kholi added, has certain criteria in choosing members and among them is to not accept atheists nor those who adopt outrageous ideologies under the pretext of freedom.
“We are conservative youths and we always encourage our members to be role models as far as ethics are concerned.”
So it would be rather unlikely Ms al-Mahdi would ever want in the first place to be part of their gang of knobbly kneed adolescent puritans.
Exactly who is out to destroy who here?
Charlize Theron frets over her application to join April 6 Youth Movement
One of the ways a new, thrusting member of MB and the like Islamists can make his bones and power-up his street cred is by defacing pictures of women around the streets. In Khartoum, young Islamists cut their teeth with such delightful and thoughtful political actions as scratching out the face of the innocent maid advertising yogurt and scrawling in big letters across the defaced image the word “WHORE”. Such are the moral imberciles we are dealing with in Islamists.
It is election time here in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood wants to win and prove that the Revolution was really just Spring Time for Hitler in Egypt-land. However, election posters pose a bit of a problem for a party that has women candidates and yet also promotes the view that women should not be seen, nor heard and encourages its youth to write evil things all over the pictures of women.
What to do? It is such a poser.
The Muslim Brotherhood have the answer: on election posters for women candidates, it will not show their face. Oh no, they will deploy the image of a booootifoool flower (ah, how sweet!) to protect the personhood of the lady from the sexually deviant thoughts of bad men without beards who might even drink beer and not go to mosque on Fridays.
Even better, on some posters the woman candidate is not only disguised as a flower, she is steadfastly only referred to as the otherwise anonymous “wife of brother so-and-so”.
Please, Egypt – do not even think about voting for these demented, evil people.
Avert your eyes, O sisters!
Whilst tooling around on Google, I decided to check out the results of “Darth Vader + Islam”. I found some fairly tiresome bollocks that seemed to revolve around the gag that Muslim women in full burka looked like Darth Vader. Yawn. Lots of that.
Then I came across this completely deranged and utterly inadvertently hilarious “serious” appreciation of Star Wars feat Islam… enjoy, but do not go cross-eyed:
As most “Star Wars” fans know, director George Lucas took spiritual elements, which are common in most major world religions to create his epic saga of good vs. evil. As a Muslim, I always thought of the “Jedi” as what a true follower of Islam should be like. Never mind the fact Jedi masters with their North African style cloaks and scruffy beards look like Sufi Sheikhs, but they way they are taught to respect a greater power, fight for the defense of the innocent and honor a code of morals and ethics in order to bring about peace and justice to their society, is basically what Islam teaches all Muslims to strive for. So what really is the connection between these similar Islamic principles and the fictional “Jedi Order” of the Star Wars saga? Read on, here.
Allahu Akhbar!
As may be becoming clear, I have a rather eclectic taste in the music thing…
This I like (and its sentiments) – so do many of my Egyptian friends, for whom it rings all too true:
Issandr el Amrani has put up an updated map of the political parties in Egypt. Well worth a butchers…
The Egyptian activist Aliya’a Magdi el-Mahdi has caused a right royal shitstorm by putting up on Facebook a full-frontal nude photograph of herself. This has, inevitably caused conniptions amongst the sexually-frustrated vote-buyers and election manipulators known to the Egyptian voting public as the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Men in Zealot Beards have reacted with horror and thundered in simulated rage (because one just knows that lots of them have furtively saved said offending image onto their hard drives and Blackberries) about how this is all yet another damning example of the sort of thing that happens when evil, Western secularism seeps into the pores of Egyptian society. Some of the nutters online of said persuasion are calling for her death. Others are asserting that this will lead to thousands of unwanted pregnancies as the youth, driven into lustful fits by the sight of Ms. el-Mahdi’s well-trimmed lady garden, start copulating furiously with perfect strangers on the bus. Yet others are announcing that Ms El-Mahdi is no Egyptian… oh no, goodness no… she must be (you guessed it) A JEW!
This is the terribly offensive image. If only all revolutionaries were so brave.
Just like that, out loud, bloody rude.
There is a very serious side to this. Aliya’a has said that it is time to take action and overthrow all the medieval bullshit in Egypt. She has written:
Put the nude models at art schools on trial, hide art books, break ancient nude statues, then take off your clothes, look in the mirror and set the bodies you despise on fire to rid you of your sexual complexes, before you address me with your bigoted opinions and take away my freedom of press
She is right and I stand by her right to take this very necessary action. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Long live Aliya’a El-Mahdi!
PS Aliya’a ‘s Facebook page is now down.
Fire away… if you want.
Sadiq al-Mahdi, North Sudan’s only ever elected leader, overthrown by the Islamist-military alliance that is still in charge in Khartoum, was never known for his skills in building alliances or maintaining them. Indeed, his genius lies in sowing discord and wrecking cross-party, cross-community dialogue and united action. The Sudan Tribune reports a new twist in al-Mahdi’s disruptive and entirely self-serving influence in Sudanese political life:
November 10, 2011 (LONDON) – The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) today slammed statements the by leader of the opposition National Umma Party (NUP), Sadiq al-Mahdi over alleged support of the rebel group by the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
- Sudan’s former Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition National Umma Party (NUP) al-Sadiq al-Mahdi (Reuters)
In an interview with the London based Asharq Alawsat two days ago, Al-Mahdi said Gaddafi had a role in the eight year armed conflict in Darfur region. He stressed that the former Libyan leader was against the Doha peace process and hosted JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim.
“There is no doubt that the Justice and Equality Movement received considerable support from Colonel Gaddafi before his end,” Mahdi stated.
JEM spokesperson Gibreel Adam Bilal on Thursday vehemently rejected the statements of the former Sudanese prime minister reaffirming it did not receive any support from the Gaddafi regime.
The rebel official said Khalil Ibrahim, JEM’s chairman, was forced to stay in Libya where he had been placed under house arrest in the Libyan capital before to secure his return to Darfur while after the collapse of Tripoli in the hands of the revolutionaries.
However, before one gets all dewy-eyed about the poor old JEM being smeared, one should be aware that there is considerable evidence that JEM form part of the grand coalition of Islamists and fellow travelers being brought together by the eminence gris of Sudanese politics, Hassan al-Turabi.
Turabi was the mastermind behind the Islamist-military alliance that bought Omar al-Bashir to power and overthrew the ever quarrelsome al-Mahdi. Al-Mahdi has reasons to hate anything and anyone who consorts with al-Turabi. al-Turabi is on the make again.
One of the persistent tragedies of Sudanese politics is that hardly any of its players are especially committed to anything but the seizure of power and their own enrichment. So far it has cost millions of lives, the mass starvation and immiseration of the people and the continued fragmentation of the Sudan.
Ed Hussain sticks it to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt over on the Council for Foreign Affairs website, accusing al-Ikhwaan of bribery and voter manipulation in the run up to the elections in Egypt.
MB Leader lies through his teeth
I want to go to the headwaters of the Blue Nile and so to Abyssinia. For reasons like this beautiful, haunting traditional Eritrean Orthodox Christian music,
Eritrea orthodox mezmur, Kudus Mikael church, Adi-keyih-Eritrea:
but who can forget?
Many years ago, when I first started living and working outside of the UK, I was fortunate to find work in the Moroccan city of Tangier. I lived on the top floor of an apartment block very close to the old opera house, below the Boulevard Pasteur. I maintained myself on a horrible combination of Ricard, hashish and an on-off, clandestine yet mostly quite innocent love affair with the girl downstairs (who was, almost inevitably, called Fatima).
An affair mostly conducted on the roof we shared, sometimes in other parts of town, often on the stairs. None of this was good for my mental health, of course.
I balanced such excesses with the reading of good books. At the time I had my own English, passable French and that was about all. I wanted to read Arabic and found for sale a second-hand copy of Thatcher’s Arabic Grammar, a book published in about 1912. Even then, knowing next to nothing of Arabic, I was puzzled to know how or when such gems as “Thy slave, the comely one, doth draw water from the well” would ever stand me in good stead with the shambling Berber tradesmen I bargained with in the local souk. However, I do recall thinking that “Lo! Verily, thy eyes are as eggs, O my sister” might come in handy. She had beautiful eyes, did Fatima.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
I am traveling today to Luxor in Upper Egypt in order to attend the funeral of a very dear friend, the husband of my ex-boss, who died suddenly last night.
David had been suffering for years from severe epilepsy occasioned by brain surgery, itself resulting from being kicked square in the head by a horse in Giza about ten years ago. A few weeks ago, David had a fit, fell from a high balcony and landed on his head on the concrete patio of his house in Luxor. More brain surgery ensued. He appeared to be slowly recovering, but early last night he suddenly died.
He was a lovely man and he will be terribly missed by his wife, his many friends and my son, who was very attached to David.
Update: David is buried in the graveyard of the 5th Century Coptic monastery of St Tawadros, in the Valley of the Queens, on the West Bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor.
May he rest in peace.
May, 1867
His Holiness, Demetrius, Pope of Alexandria, Patriarch of all of Africa, God’s Thirteenth Apostle was in a particularly foul mood. He shifted atop the mattress that was upon the raised palm frame of the low cot, itself in the pride of places, atop the diwan that was spread upon the raised floor of the guest’s meeting chamber, that stood on one side of the courtyard of the house of a wealthy Copt of Luxor.
Demetrius savagely puffed on his shisha pipe and screamed abuse at his host, the host’s servants and slaves. The whole household rocked to the sound of the ill-tempered prelate’s tantrums.
What was making the Pope so especially upset were the antics of certain Copts of the downstream Upper Egyptian settlement of Qus, who had the temerity to leave the Coptic Orthodox faith – without permission – and become Presbyterian Protestants – what’s worse - instead. Mortified and furious, hearing of this, Demetrius roused himself from his pleasant palace in Cairo and descended upon Upper Egypt in order to investigate matters more closely for himself.
The previous Coptic Pope, Cyril, had been forced into retirement by a coalition of conservative Coptic hierarchs, alarmed at his reforming zeal in raising the standards for admission to the priesthood and his ecumenism towards other Christian traditions. Cyril was popular with the Coptic laity. Demetrius was the conservatives’ replacement for Cyril in the Patriarchal Palace in Cairo, he was not awfully popular with the Coptic Street, and he knew it. He found some independence from his seething Synod of dyed-the-wool reactionary bishops and monks in cultivating a reliable obsequiousness before the Muslim Khedive, who ruled Egypt and within whose court the Pope conspired against and with other courtiers in order to press his particular and sectional interests. In reward for such devotion to the ruler of Egypt, the Pope had come away with sizable land grants and the prerogative to coerce peasants, Copt and Muslim alike, to work upon any project he might venture that required the outlay of considerable manual labour.
On hearing of the mass defection of Coptic households to the Presbyterian Church in the town of Qus, the Pope had demanded and expected the Khedive to act. He urged the Khedive and his regional governor, the Mudir, to arrest the offending Coptic men and send them to hard labour on the railway pushing south from Cairo, or to press them into the army. The Mudir, doubtless on instructions from the Khedive, did nothing of the sort. Now, furious and frustrated, Demetrius had descended on the offending region, determined to cow the remaining Coptic Orthodox community back into order. As he processed around Upper Egypt, he demanded the local faithful pay, in full, all the costs of his visitation upon them.
Lucie Austin had traveled to Luxor because of its climate. Lucie was in the final stages of tuberculosis, and the dry heat of the southern desert eased somewhat the symptoms of her terminal disease. Becoming a bit of a local celebrity, she was generally invited to all the great social occasions and the visitation of the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church was bound to interest her. Accordingly, she was invited to an audience with Demetrius II, as he fidgeted angrily atop his pile of mattresses, in the house of a local Coptic community leader in Luxor.
Demetrius was not best pleased to be introduced to Lucie: an English person, a woman and a Protestant, to boot. He forced her to sit on a low stool away from him and refused to allow her a shisha to smoke. Fulminating, Demetrius expounded a religious doctrine of the most exquisite insult to the Protestants. Was it not so that the Greek Orthodox were a lowly and weak people – and so of no threat to the Coptic Church? Yet they fasted. And even the Muslims followed an ancient faith – he quickly added – and Muslims fasted. All of them, Demetrius thundered, fasted. Did Protestants, a new-fangled heresy, fast? No, they did not. Dogs did not fast either, Demetrius hissed. Assenting to allow Lucie a cup of coffee, Demetrius sulked until she cottoned on that the Pope was simply not going to invite her to dinner, and so she left and had dark thoughts about the Thirteenth Apostle and his appallingly bad manners.
Reference: Lucie Austin (Lady Duff Gordon), Last Letters, May 1867.
“Inta Omri”, (“You are my life”) is an Egyptian classical song which was made popular by Oum Kalthoum in 1965.
The full length of this song, including its instrumentals, is about 40 minutes. A classical piece, it introduces its theme, which is then elaborated and varied in terms of tempo and mode across a series of interlinking musical acts before culminating in an up-tempo and strong finale. This excerpt quite extraordinary in its musicianship, craft and delivery. Its first movement, in particular, is of a stunning, hard beauty that simple aches with emotion. This is, nonetheless only a section of the whole piece, that may be followed on YouTube.
“You are my life that starts its dawn with your light…”
Oum Kalthoum was born in 1904 and died in 1975. She was unquestionably the most gifted singer and musician of the 20th century in the Middle East. She was continuously popular for over 50 years and her songs are still played nightly in any number of taxis driven erratically, late at night, by cabbies of a certain age up and down Egypt. Oum Kalthoum is one of four vocalists who have achieved near god-like status in Egyptian music. The other three are Farid al-Atrache (the King of Mawal), Mohammed Abdel Wahab, and Abdel Halim Hafez.
From Edward William Lane’s An account of the manners and customs of modern Egyptians, written in Egypt in the years 1833, -34, -35.
The schoolmasters in Egypt are mostly persons of very little learning: few of them are acquainted with any writings except the Quran, and certain prayers, which, as well as the contents of the sacred volume, they are hired to recite on particular occasions. I was lately told of a man who could neither read nor write succeeding to the office of a schoolmaster in my neighbourhood. Being able to recite the whole of the Quran, he could hear the boys repeat their lessons: to write them he employed the “‘areef” (or head-boy and monitor in the school), pretending that his eyes were weak. A few days after he had taken upon himself this office, a poor woman bought a letter for him to read to her from her son, who had gone on pilgrimage. The fiqee [schoolmaster] pretended to read it, but said nothing; and the woman, inferring from his silence that the letter contained bad news, said to him, “Shall I shriek?” He answered, “Yes.” “Shall I tear my clothes?” she asked; he replied, “Yes.” So the poor woman returned to her house, and with her assembled friends performed the lamentation and other ceremonies usual on the occasion of a death. Not many days after this, her son arrived and she asked him what he could mean by causing a letter to be written stating that he was dead? He explained the contents of the letter, and she went to the school master and begged him to inform her why he had told her to shriek and to tear her clothes, since the letter was to inform her that her son was well, and he was now arrived at home. Not at all abashed, he said, “God knows futurity. How could I know that your son would arrive in safety? It was better that you should think him dead than be led to expect to see him and perhaps be disappointed.” Some persons who were sitting with him praised his wisdom, exclaiming, “Truly, our new fiqee is a man of unusual judgment!” and, for a little while, he found that he had raised his reputation by this blunder.
