Disturbances in Tanta

After the revolution succeded at removing a 30years old regime,causing the tyrant to flee to Sharm El-Sheikh,everyone started dreaming of New Egypt.Among these dreamers were the students of Tanta University.They dreamt of a better education,better laboratories,of some respect from their Porfessors who treated them like garbage (not all of them though,but the majority were treating students badly).
The believe in changing these dreams from a mere dream to a fact,a reality on the ground grew bigger when Deans (some of the Faculties Deans not all of them) announced they're willing to hear out the students,see their demands.
So,students made their lists of demands, were very rational about it.made a list of demands that can be achieved now and other demands that would take time, effort and money to achieve it and they were willing to wait till these demands are executed. After all,rush in reforms can result in bad reforms.
The surprise was how the Deans reacted towards these demands.between procrastinating in carrying them out and threats of firing all students who came to the meetings to submit their list of demands,Deans varied in how severe they reacted but the result was the same...Nothing was accomplished!
It was normal that Students decide to protest for their rights and for the resignation of the Head of University who was appointed in her position only because she worked with Suzanne Mubarak at a time and she's a woman (or at least,so the students believe)
these pics are from one of the protests











it's worth mentioning that the University administration gave us a deadline by which we should have agreed, as students, upon an outline for the final exams schedule. Couple of days later,there was a white paper on the board...the final exams schedule. I think this showed us how committed they, the University administration I mean, are committed to our demands.

Constitutional referendums: YES or NO?

I can’t hide my happiness with the debate currently taking place all over Egypt about the constitutional referendum. This is a product of democracy. For the first time in 60 years Egyptians don’t know the result of a voting. All of this wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t risk our lives for the sake of our freedom.

So, I’m writing this article mainly to help people make up their minds about the referendums. Stating what each “camp” has got to say to support their opinion and you make up your mind in the end. You can disregard my comments in between the brackets as it mainly reflects my personal opinion. I tried to be un-biased as hard as I can

If you still didn’t read the referendums yet try checking them out on here or here.

SAYING YES:

• Advantages:

1. it’ll contribute, somehow, to the return of stability, safety and security to the streets. This would contribute to the process of rebuilding our Egypt
2. this would help the Egyptians “get rid of” the military governing we currently suffer from.
3. when we have civic ruling we can have all the debates, protests and sit-ins we want.

• Disadvantages:

1. some people say that article 189 doesn’t really oblige the new government to make a new constitution. Law professors say that the article is obligatory, others say the new government may choose not to comply to such obligation, or stall (risky, because then we’ll have to resort to the streets to claim our rights)
2. time required to get rid of military governing is 12-18 months. This time is more than enough to make a new constitution. Instead of starting new Egypt with a temporary constitution, why not start off with a new, permanent constitution?
3. there will be too many elections and polls to be made during that time. That would disturb the education process
4. NDP might get a chance to jump back into the parliament either as a reformed NDP or a new “25^th January” party and the “freedom” party they are trying to found. New parties won’t find time to be found or establish and publish their ideas and policies.

• What would happen if we said yes?

1. Optimism: NDP, somehow, won’t be able to jump back in power. Everything goes smoothly. New constitution and thus a fresh new start for our Egypt (not that likely to occur and we’d still suffer from 8 elections: 2 parliamentary elections and one presidential before the new constitution. The new constitution plebiscite and the 2 parliamentary, 1 presidential elections after the new constitution)
2. Pessimism: NDP does manage to get back into power (either as NDP, or as 25^th January or the freedom parties, all three parties are NDP), enforcing their policies and candidates because they’ll be the most organized party on the political scene. So, we’ll have NDP government all over again (more likely to occur)

SAYING NO:

• Advantages:

1. the start of writing a new constitution that would provide a fresh start for Egypt
2. gives time for newly found and not yet found parties to get themselves organized and publish their ideas in order to get people’s support and attention.
3. once stability, safety and security are returned to the streets, it’ll be permanent because of the presence of a permanent constitution

• Disadvantages:

1. the state of chaos present in the country will last a while longer (may be till a constitution is made). But some political activists see that the main defense against chaos is the people themselves as they did on 28^th January after the police abandoned their posts. Quoting Benjamin franklin when he said: “he who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither
2. the military governing will be continued (but as I said, it’d last either way for 12-18 months till a new president is elected if we accepted the referendums and it can be replaced by a presidential council made of 2 civilians and 1 military figures).

• Additional note on NDP (personal opinion) :

The only way to ensure that the NDP won’t participate in politics is by issuing a law preventing them from practicing any political activity for 4 years.

1. if we said yes: there won’t be enough time to pressure the Armed Forces council to issue such a law, especially with their slow responses to the revolutionaries’ demands they’re showed so far. Parties won’t be able to organize themselves to compete with the NDP too.
2. if we said NO: there would be enough time to pressure the council to issue such law. Also, it’d allow the other parties to organize themselves. Thus, even if the law wasn’t issued, there will still be powerful competition from other parties

Hope I was as un-biased as I wanted to be.

About the recent events I say

I’d like to state that I, as a Muslim, am not represented by the events that happened in the past days, carried out by a group of people who call themselves Muslims. They don’t understand anything about Islam and yet they act in its name.


First: The interception of women protests: it’s an absolutely outrageous thing, Islam orders us to respect women not to harass them and intercept their protests. Beside, we are ordered to give the women their right, whether they want more rights or they believe they’re receiving no rights or whatever their opinion is, and you don’t agree with them, simply argue with them. In a civilized, intellectual manner. Intercepting them, harassing them and yelling at them shows you know nothing of your religion (whether you’re a Muslim or a Christian).

Women’s role is noticed throughout the Islamic history, I just want to state one of these roles : the person who narrated most of Hadith (prophet’s saying, guidance and rules in Islam) was his wife Khadeeja.


Second: As for the incidents that have happened in Atfeeh: I couldn’t condemn it more. This is totally stupid, absolutely ignorant thing to do. The prophet said that if we hurt a Christian or Jew, it’s like hurting the prophet himself. To burn a church and kick Christians out of their homes is in total violation of what our religion asks us to do. This is terrorism. Terrorists are cursed in Islam and have punishments varying according to their crimes.

There are believes that all these incidents are happening because the “State Security” wants revenge from the people for what has happened (the breaking into the HQs of the SS and confiscating documents). I think that the SS used the most powerful weapon that the Mubarak’s regime has been using and strengthening it for 30 years…ignorance.
The educational system in Egypt teaches students not to think. It changes them to information receivers. Trains them to shut down their brain and just do what they are told. It wouldn’t be hard for an SS agent to convince people that those Christians should be exiled from the village, with the help of other SS agents (who would be among the people, show agreement with what the SS agent says and thus convince the people that what he’s saying is a good idea).

All of these incidents serve the SS, in my opinion, to achieve three goals:

• Distract the people from the constitutional amendments.
• Divide and conquer: make people long for the era of Mubarak, when people lost their dignity and had a false sense of security. Also that would make the revolutionaries mission to fight for freedom much harder since they won’t be fighting the loyalists to the fallen regime, but also they’ll have to convince the people that what they’re doing is for their own good
• Down Essam Sharaf government: since it’s a revolutionaries chosen government, showing it as a helpless government that can’t run things in Egypt would damage the revolutionaries image, people will suspect their choices and demands which will also contribute to making the mission of the revolutionaries harder.

We shouldn't let them have their way, we’ll show them that we are united. I have Christian friends, they were among the people who attended my grandma’s funeral. We are Egyptians first and foremost. Killing us won’t get them their regime back. We’ll not go back to the era before 25th January. We didn’t fight for freedom to lose it to a group of empty-headed SS agents. We’ll show them that we are one. And on Friday Christians and Muslims will protest together to show unity. They’ll chant together for freedom and dignity we longed for. And the SS agents will fail.

Elbaradei: traitor or a patriot?

What do we know about El-Baradei? As Egyptians,we know that El-Baradei was head of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for 3 periods,Nobel prize for peace winner,and the person who has helped the US into Iraq after he wrote his filthy,full of lies report that the US used to invade Iraq,he was made and preserved by the US and a dual nationality citizen (has Egyptian and American citizenships),right?WRONG.

This is what the old regime told us about El-Baradei,that's what they want us to believe,but after a little ,yet exhausting,search I can tell you he's clear of all these “charges” (if you can call them that).

El-baradei never supported war on Iraq,he was against it,and the report he and Dr. Blix wrote was in favour of Iraq,yet the US (as they usually do) chose not to listen to the UN Security Council.

ELbaradei's work in Iraq was divided into two stages:

• reconnaissance phase: was aimed at re-establishing rapidly the knowledge base of Iraq's nuclear capabilities, ensuring that nuclear activities at known key facilities had not been resumed, verifying the location of nuclear material and relevant non-nuclear material and equipment, and identifying the current workplaces of former key Iraqi personnel.
• investigative phase: is achieving an understanding of Iraq's activities over the last four years, in particular in areas identified by States(countries who are member of the UN Security Council) as being of concern and those identified by the IAEA on the basis of its own analysis

the following are number of reports and documents acquired from the IAEA official website www.iaea.org:

Apparently Elbaradei was not in favour of war on Iraq even during the update reports he gave to the UN,here he states clearly in the conclusion of his report that:

• “As I have reported on numerous occasions, the IAEA concluded, by December 1998, that it had neutralized Iraq's past nuclear programme and that, therefore, there were no unresolved disarmament issues left at that time.”
• “We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear related activities in Iraq”

This statement was made on 14 February 2003. The lines above are quotes from that statement.

In Elbaradei's statement to the UN Security Council in March 2003 Elbaradei clearly stated that the industrial capacity of Iraq has “deteriorated substantially” due to the departure of the foreign support that was often present in the late 1980s,the departure of large number of skilled staff of Iraq and the inability of Iraq to maintain sophisticated equipment.

1. No resume of nuclear activity in buildings that were there in 1998
2. No resume of nuclear activity at recently inspected sites
3. No import of Uranium since 1990
4. Aluminium tube import wasn't for centrifuge enrichment and it's difficult to use them for that matter

he also told told UN Security Council in March 2003 that documents purporting to show Iraq had tried to acquire Uranium from Niger were not authentic.

Click here to watch the first part of statement

Click here to watch the second part of the statemet.

Actually, Elbaradei and Blix were threatened to be discredited by the US if their report didn't provide the legal cover for the US war on Iraq. In the interview of Ms. Amanpour and Dr. Blix, Blix speaks about his book “Mass Destruction: Truth and Consequences” about his experience in Iraq about the disarmament. He described the situation like it was the medieval ages and he was supposed to prove that Iraqis aren't witches while everyone believed them to be,he also stated in his book that “the absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence”.

Blix said that the US ignored what they (he and EL-Baradei) said in their reports to the UN Security Council. He also mentioned that in summer 2002,the US started the build to invade Iraq (which happened in 2003) even thought by May 2003 it was obvious that there were no weapons of Mass destruction.

On the 25^th minute of the 58 minutes-long interview he clearly states that Dick Cheney said he would not hesitate to discredit the inspectors if their report wasn't in favour of “disarmament”.

Dick Cheney said in October 2002 that inspectors are useless at best. Blix mentioned in that interview that Chemical weapons aren't weapons of mass destruction since their effect is rather localized.

Click here to watch the interview.

It's worth mentioning that Elbaradei said if the US and other nuclear countries like the UK and France really had credibility,they showed dismantle their nuclear weapons in order to contribute to the world wide disarmament the IAEA wants to achieve

Click here to watch the interview of Baradei with Charlie Rose

And of-course, after all these reasons,the Der SPIEGEL (in an article written on 8 December 2005, 49/2005 Edition, page 78) was astounded when the US officials congratulated ElBaradei for winning the Nobel peace prize. Where it was written:” Phone calls also came from senior US staff - quite surprising considering that the Bush Administration had made every effort to push the IAEA Chief out of office because of his resistance to the Iraq war. And even had his phone bugged by the CIA, as the Washington Post revealed in December 2004”

The article also speaks about Colin Powell's attempt to find an excuse to war on Iraq saying:” In his (Colin Powell's) speech to the Security Council on 5 February 2003 he mentioned as evidence of Saddam Hussein´s nuclear programme the attempted import of aluminium tubes, even though ElBaradei´s UN inspectors had determined that they were not suitable for making centrifuges for bomb production.”

Also spoke about Condolezza Rice's stance towards the inspectors saying:” she(Condoleezza Rice) severely criticized the weapons inspectors and sounded off about threats of nuclear mushroom clouds that Saddam could unleash - one of the justifications for the invasion of Iraq that has long been refuted, like so many others.”

Click here to read the Article.

And to answer your questions that I believe buzz in your head. No,I'm 100% Egyptian and No,I wont vote for ElBaradei if he ran for presidency,I simply didn't make my mind yet,I'll wait to see who will have the best plan for his presidency period. I simply just think someone in his position desereves a little bit more respect from his own people while the rest of the world is celebrating and admiring him.

Further links about Elbaradei:

Click here for wikipedia

Click here for press conference on 9 February,2003

Click here for another press conference on 19 December,2002

Click here to watch Elbaradei's video recieving Indira Ghandi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development