AFP, by Jailan Zayan, Sunday, August 16th.

Photo: Zoriah (c). Hezbollah logo painted on bullet pocked wall in Beirut, Lebanon.

CAIRO — Twenty-two men, dressed in white and crowded into a cage in a Cairo court, denied charges on Sunday of plotting attacks in Egypt for Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, with some alleging torture by police.

As the trial began, the alleged members of the cell pleaded not guilty to charges of “conspiracy to murder, spying for a foreign organisation with intent of conducting terrorist attacks and weapons possession.”

(…اكثر)

Ismailia, Egypt, June 28. Reuters

Photo: Ehab Lotayef. Gate along with Egyptian border with Gaza.

The security sources said they had spotted three men attempting to slip across the border into Israel and ordered them to stop, opening fire when the migrants failed to do so.

The unidentified African man was killed by a bullet fired into the right side of his chest, and the two Eritreans with him were also shot, the sources said.

(…اكثر)

Al Kitab (Arabic for ‘Book’), is a new book club organized by Tadamon!

Photo: James Longley. Al-Mutanabi Street in Iraq.

Al Kitab club members (six to 10 people) will meet in a comfortable place (someone’s home, a quiet café, or a room in a public library) once a month to discuss and reflect on a book.

(…اكثر)

guardian.co.uk, by Ahdaf Soueif, Friday 5 June 2009.

Photo: Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Egypt.

This is hard. It’s hard because we so need to believe that Obama is about change, that he’s wise, that he’s good, that he has the interests of the world – rather than just the interests of the United States – at heart.

The 3,500 invited guests were told they’d have to be in their places by 10.30. But Obama would speak at one. An odd time for everyone, it would seem: for us in Cairo, where the cool of the evening is the preferred time for any event, and for people in America, who wouldn’t yet have woken up. I dress with my eye on the television screen: the loop of Obama touching cheeks with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, his hand resting for a companionable minute on the old monarch’s arm. Just before I leave the house I glimpse the prancing horses that make up part of Obama’s procession into Cairo.

(…اكثر)

Erin Cunningham, Inter Press Service, 16 April 2009

Photo: Gaza City from the Mediterranean Sea.

Hundreds of thousands of tons of aid intended for the Gaza Strip is piling up in cities across Egypt’s North Sinai region, despite recent calls from the United Nations to ease aid flow restrictions to the embattled territory in the wake of Israel’s 22-day assault.

Food, medicine, blankets, infant food and other supplies for Gaza’s 1.5 million people, coming from governments and non-governmental agencies around the world, are being stored in warehouses, parking lots, stadiums and on airport runways across Egypt’s North Sinai governorate.

(…اكثر)

Tadamon! translation from Mashahed, Egypt.

Photo: Hossam el-Hamalawy. Workers strike in Egypt.

In an unprecedented action, the first following the recent Israeli war on Gaza, workers of an Egyptian Fertilizers Company in Suez protested on Saturday February 7th against the export of fertilizers to Israel.

The Fertilizers Egyptian Company is owned by Sawiris family, Naguib Sawiris ranks 62 in Forbes’ world’s richest list, while his father Onsi ranks 96 and his brother Nassif ranks 226, under the name Orascom construction company. Fertilizers Egyptian Company signed an agreement to export 1000 tons of phosphate fertilizer to Israel, at a rate of 100 tons per week. An estimated 800 Egyptians work at this factory.

(…اكثر)

Photo: Per Bjorklund. Demonstration in downtown Cairo in solidarity with Gaza.

Protests erupted on the streets of Cairo, Egypt only hours after the first air strikes hit in the current Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip. Special focus has been directed at the Egyptian government’s role in the ongoing crisis in Gaza, as protesters across the Middle East denounced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak collusion with Israeli authorities in maintaining a complete closure on Gaza throughout the past year. Gaza remains under siege and completely cut-off from the outside world as Egyptian police and military maintain a complete closure on the Gaza Strip in coordination with Israeli along the southern Rafah border crossing.

(…اكثر)

A special edition of World Skip the Beat, on CKUT Radio in Montreal, which explores music and song from around the world inspired by immigration, Diaspora and migration. Featuring music from all corners of the world, this special program offers unique and rare musical selections from diverse artists from Algeria, Canada, Cap Verde, Egypt, France, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Lebanon, Peru, Slovakia and Spain. A special edition of World Skip the Beat produced by Dror Warschawski.

(…اكثر)

Beirut: “I was in Cairo for my first Egyptian concert,” Rima Khcheich smiles. “I was preparing an Umm Kalthoum song, a dour [a classical vocal form without improvisation] called ‘Dour Emta al-Hawa.’ Two days before the concert I met [iconic Egyptian composer] Fouad Abdel Majid. The rehearsals were difficult and I was very tired but they asked me to sing his song ‘Foutina al-Lathi.’ They recorded it on a little cassette tape recorder.”

(…اكثر)

What connections can be drawn between the waves of student and popular protest that swept the world in 1968? Amina Elbendary asks Hossam Issa, an Egyptian student in Paris in May 1968…

May 1968 was an exceptional moment in world history, but like moments of protest before and since it had its roots in events long before and its echoes have continued to reverberate long afterwards. In addition to the revolt in Paris in May, 1968 also saw protests in other parts of the world, including Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, Pakistan and the US. The ongoing war in Vietnam and continuing racial tensions led to student demonstrations in the latter country, notably at Columbia University in New York and at Berkeley in California.

In Egypt’s case, the 1968 events came at a time when the state was already under pressure from failing development goals, and it had resorted to coercive measures in the years leading up to the 1967 defeat. However, popular protest against the regime had been growing since the mid 1960s, and, as Hossam Issa, Professor of Law at Ain Shams University in Cairo recalls, confrontation between students and the authorities had already taken place in summer 1966 when postgraduate students on state-funded study abroad were summoned home to discuss their criticisms of the government with the then president, Gamal Abdel-Nasser.

(…اكثر)