Tag: egypt

Police ban another pro-Gaza demo

It seems the demo that some bloggers tried to hold Friday in front of the Israeli embassy in Giza, never materialized.
The blogger who issued the initial call for the demo, Asad, wrote an account of what happened. It’s in Arabic, so to cut a long story short: some people showed up, but did not dare to start a demo due to the massive security presence. Asad reports there were thousands of CSF troops and State Security agents, who banned anyone from assembling or approaching the Nahdet Masr statue, that was announced to be the meeting point. The Friday ban comes after police agents banned a demo in solidarity with Gaza last Wednesday.

Call for boycotting government publications Sunday

Journalists for Change have called for a national boycott of state-owned publications, like Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar, and Al-Gomhorriya on Sunday, in solidarity with the 12 independent and opposition papers which are to go on strike on the same day.
The activists have also called for a demonstration 11am in front of the parliament to protest the proposed new Press Law, which has been denounced by the Press Syndicate as “designed to protect government corruption.”

Zarqawi’s successor imprisoned in Egypt?!

The debate around the identity of Zarqawi’s successor is getting really “Kafkaesque” as Arabist reader SP wrote me in an email exchange.
Now Islamist lawyer, and former Egyptian Islamic Jihad activist, Mamdouh Ismail is saying Abu Ayub al-Masri, Zarqawi’s alleged successor, actually is and has been in an Egyptian prison for the past seven years.
This comes after Islamist lawyer Montasser al-Zayat suggested he was another man by the name Youssef al-Dardeeri, while London-based Egyptian Islamist exile, Yasser al-Sirri, claimed the man did not even exist.

Kifaya’s corruption report and more

I will be traveling and not posting much for the next few days. I was going to write something about the new report on corruption by Kifaya (basically that I think it’s a great, concrete move by the movement that should hush critics who say it’s not accomplishing anything) but don’t have time, so read Abu Aardvark’s post which mentions it, further discusses the press situation, and meanders through the moral maze of Arab democracy promotion. But hopefully Hossam will keep you informed in the next few days too. And if anyone has the text of the report in an electronic format, the email address is issandr – at – arabist.net. I quickly checked the Kifaya site but they had some kind of technical error.

More Golia on land reform

I’ve linked before to Maria Golia’s Daily Star columns, in which she’s currently exploring Egypt’s catastrophic and little-discussed land problems — the way it is administered, what’s being farmed on it, what’s being built on it, and what the government is doing about planning for the future of an ever scarcer resource. In her latest missive she takes another look and land reform, what’s being proposed and what’s (not) being done. Unfortunately, the Daily Star has recently started putting them behind a wall, so it’s reproduced below for your enjoyment. And remember to buy her book on your way out.

The line between famine and abundance is clearly drawn in Egypt, a green vein of Nile-fed land surrounded by lifeless sand. Yet administrative and public denial of land and water shortages is nothing short of suicidal. Given accelerated unplanned growth, only a cathartic reassessment of Egypt’s situation coupled with comprehensive land reform can rescue this uniquely challenged nation from ruin.

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Egypt newspapers to go on strike Sunday

A dozen opposition party and independent newspapers have announced they will not appear next Sunday to protest the government’s new press laws: these include not only the predictably anti-government weeklies such as Al Sawt Al Umma (whose editor Wael Al Ibrashi was recently put on trial) and the Nasserist Al Arabi, both on which normally come out on Sundays, but also independent newspapers in some cases backed by businessmen close to the regime, such as Nahdet Misr and Al Alam Al Youm (both owned by Emad Adib, who ran the PR for Mubarak’s re-election last year) or Al Masri Al Youm, which is financed by a several apolitical but well-connected businessmen. The bizarre weekly that is Al Osboa — in some ways cozy with the security services, but stridently critical of the regime in other respects — is also joining in, as are lesser tabloids such as Adel Hammouda’s Al Fagr. I suppose that for press barons, it’s easier to allow a strike that doesn’t cost them much then upset editors and journalists.

Continue reading Egypt newspapers to go on strike Sunday

98 MB detainees to be released

The Muslim Brotherhood’s official English website reported that State Security prosecutor ordered the release of 98 Muslim Brothers detainees. The detainees, however refused to pay the LE200 bail “set by the Prosecution to be paid by each detainees before being released, (MB lawyer 3abdel Mon3eim) Abdel Maqsoud deplored this attitude on the part of the prosecution enjoining the detainees to pay a bail while they should be compensated for the period they spent in detention without charges.”
The Arabist was the first news outlet to publish the full list of MB detainees last Sunday, after obtaining it from the IkhwanWeb editors, Mr. El-Sa3id Ramadan and Mr. Khaled Salam. We are kindly asking them to update us with the names of those released.
We hope all the rest of the MB detainees would be free soon, together with our friends Sharqawi and Sha3er.