Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“In the past, identification with the pharaohs – symbols of biblical and Quranic despotism – was always ambivalent. But now under Sisi it has been fully embraced: with armoured chariots, laser beams and fireworks. In the country with arguably the highest number of political prisoners and torture victims in the world, even the dead cannot be left undisturbed.” The Pharaoh is dead! Long live the Pharaoh!

“ Not only did they inhabit the unseemly world of the nightlife district (stigmatised as a moral and literal stone’s throw away from Ezbekkiya’s red-light district), these women also came from poverty and were often uneducated - only learning to read in order to rehearse (and pioneer) Egyptian theatre - a far cry from bourgeois feminism.” Review of Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt’s Roaring '20s

 Egypt’s Sisis threatens ‘instability that no one can imagine’ Related

Wikipedia disputes the claim of the 100,000 deaths in the 10 years of the construction of the Canal. This site cites 120,000 deaths .   The Long Struggle Over the Suez

 From Roasted Beans to Social Revolution

 An online event Repression and Political Prisoners in Egypt

My comments on the article below. I think the writer has missed some fundamental aspects/features of what has happened: The class dynamic and the weakness of the movement and its lack of radicalism. Its inability to generate a leader (compare that with Venezuela and Bolivia, for example, or the twentieth century revolutionary movements). The role of the middle class in Egypt (for a change first then with the military after for the sake of ‘stability’) A stability endorsed and sought for by foreign powers, regional and Western. During the uprisings there was not a single occupation of a key governmental building or financial institution. Occupying squares and marching do not shift the balance of power. Indecisiveness invited aggression by the state and other forces to size the moment. It is inaccurate to say the regime in Egypt was overthrown. Even in Tunisia it wasn’t. In the two cases, the head of the regime was removed and an internal restructuring among the factions took place, pres

Eight politicians from Germany's left-wing party – Die Linke – have signed a  solidarity statement  calling for the immediate release of all political detainees, which explicitly highlights the fate of six detained leftist activists, journalists and trade unionists.  The campaign by German left-wing politicians, in response to Sisi’s reprisals against the labour movement, has coincided with a wave of strikes and protests in Egypt’s steel industry. Germany’s Die Linke Campaign to release political prisoners in Egypt

“The Arab regimes have used every opportunity to sell out Palestinian rights to advance their own interests”

The author here does not consider the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Ennahda in Tunisia, for instance, part of the counter-revolution–socially and economically. He does not mention how and why they got support from the major imperialist powers, either. It is also a liberal journalistic piece that does not mention the class character of the Islamist parties even once. The end of political Islam as we know it

How the EU is complicit in Egypt’s brutal regime

“ At an almost planetary scale, and for some years now – certainly ever since what was called ‘the Arab Spring’ – we are in a world awash with struggles, or, more precisely, with mass mobilisations and assemblies. I propose that the general conjuncture is marked, subjectively, by what I would term ‘movementism’, namely the widely shared conviction that significant popular assemblies will undoubtedly achieve a change in the situation. We see this from Hong Kong to Algiers, Iran to France, Egypt to California, Mali to Brazil, India to Poland, as well as in many other places and countries. One may revolt against the actions of the Chinese government in Hong Kong, against the power grab by military cliques in Algiers, against the stranglehold of the religious hierarchy in Iran, against personal despotism in Egypt, against the manoeuvres of nationalist and racial reaction in California, against the actions of the French Army in Mali, against neofascism in Brazil, against the persecution of

There is little historical evidence to trust that any French leader would have done things differently.  The rights of global south populations cannot possibly match those bestowed upon the civilised masses in Europe, so why undermine the potential for profit for those who are so disposable? Or perhaps his universalism is genuine - which would explain his own commitment to violent repression of political movements and the repeated assaults  on civil liberties in France.  The French state’s relationship to "rights" is always connected to its own interests, as is the “terrorism” it claims to fight . Sisi and the hypocrisy of France’s so-called defence of human rights

 Record number of journalists jailed worldwide

Macron, unlike his American or British counterparts, is trying to be consistent. Since he violates “human rights” in France itself, why should he condition co-operation in defence and economic matters on human rights situation in Egypt? How the ruling class and imperialist backers ensure the survival of an authoritarian regime

 Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa

A long tradition of complicity in crime This article is available in four languages An indispensable’ partner in the  EU ’s strategy in the Middle East and the Mediterranean 

 Sex attacks fuel ‘feminist revolution’

 The friendly regime “liberal democracies” of Paris, London and Washington support, welcome and will welcome again ...has executed 79 political prisoners since el-Sisi came to power Egypt executes 15 ‘political prisoners’ in a new crackdown

 “A woman with a small cabbage on the way to the market.” Credit to Daniel Nadler (via Egyptian Streets)