Egypt doesn’t get enough air time or attention

Really bad things are happening in the world. And the Medias are keeping us very well informed to these events so we continue to lose our faith in the humanity because you know how we all are attracted to negativity; like bees to flowers.

Egypt with her population over 80.7 million is one of the largest countries in the Arab world/Africa/Asia having over 90% of the population being Muslim. Two other countries similar in size (population and religious composition) are Turkey (74 million) and Iran (76.5 million).

Yesterday, Iran’s president said something very boring. It was so unremarkable that I can’t even recall what it is exactly. However it made the headline around the world. Hassan Rohani, Iran’s president is getting way too much publicity …like some Hollywood celebrity. Since Rohani doesn’t have a clown-like personality similar to his predecessor, Mr Ahmadinejad (Iran’s ex-President) and is not prone to silly outbursts, you’d think we wouldn’t be forced to read insignificant news from Iran…


Real crazy stuff is going on in Egypt. Western media have not been paying enough attention to it. Today is one-year-anniversary of one of the most brutal day you could imagine.

It was the day Egypt's security forces used automatic weapons, armored personal carriers and military bulldozers to raid and crush a month long sit-in protest by thousands of supporters of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy.

According to a yearlong Human Rights Watch investigation released this week, at least 817 people were killed.

The rights group called it "one of the world's largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history."

Remember Neda Soltan the Iranian girl who was shot to death in a protest which caused a massive outrage in the world?


This is equivalent to 800 Neda Soltans who died in a single day. Sadly not enough outrage was shown as much as when Neda Soltan was killed.

Let’s have a moment of silence to those who lost their life needlessly.

Reference
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/14/world/meast/egypt-sayah-rabaa-anniversary/

Egyptian Military PR Embarrassment

Egypt is still under the military dictatorship. The military has done everything it could to suppress the people and silenced the opposition especially from the Islamic brotherhood who were formally voted in the power by a very narrow margin. Now, to legitimize their rule, the military and their backers have written a new constitution for Egypt and has publicize this “achievement” as a great victory for all. It didn’t turn out as well as they expected.

A campaign to win support for a draft of Egypt’s new constitution got off to a rocky start on Sunday, one month ahead of a referendum, when observers noticed that a banner promoting the document misspelled the word for “Egyptians” in Arabic and used stock images of foreigners to stand in for representative citizens.

Within hours of the campaign’s launch, journalists and bloggers discovered that three of the five Egyptians pictured on the banner were apparently not Egyptians at all, and suspicions grew that the makers of the poster had simply searched Google to find stock images of “a doctor,” “a businesswoman,” “a farmer,” “a man with Down syndrome” and “an Egyptian soldier.”

Image of the doctor had previously been used on the American site ehowtogetridofstretchmarks.com; the stock image of the businesswoman already graced the home page of an Irish professional networking site; and the image of the man with Down syndrome illustrated an article in an Arizona business magazine last year.

Here's a poster mocking the original banner -made up of aliens.

Reference
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/egyptians-mock-ads-promoting-new-constitution-with-typos-and-stock-images/?_r=1

Egypt still in a mess

Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court ruled Sunday that

• The laws that governed the election of the country’s only operating house of Parliament is invalid
• the body that drafted the country’s postrevolutionary Constitution is also invalid

The other criticism is from the opposition that stated the Ikhwan’s political party ignores other viewpoints and uses its political muscle to advance an Islamist agenda.

The Supreme Court also stated that Egypt’s President (Morsi) doesn’t have the right to place anyone under detention using the arbitrary emergency law.

I guess the Muslims don’t learn much from their mistakes. Politicians don’t suddenly become pious just because they are constantly talking about Islam. Politicians never keep their promises so you have to always keep them humble and accountable. The Islamists cannot be trusted to govern ever. Islam is just a tool to advance their political agenda so don’t ever give them that tool.

A Pointless TV Station in Egypt

Maria TV, an Egyptian channel, has fully veiled female anchors.

Egyptian Channel, Maria TV is an Islamic TV that will cater to women. They have fully veiled female anchors, who are veiled from head to toe. Even their faces are covered (eyes would be visible under the face covering).

Even the female guests who would appear on the TV station would be covered from head to toe, including wearing the face covering. Very extreme.

Here's the mission of the TV station

"I want to give children the ability to see these women and say `I want to be like that'... to create a generation that wants this and wants to be like this," Abu Islam said.

I doubt children would willingly watch such a boring TV station, especially a station where human don't have any TV presence.

Abdallah, known by his nickname Abu Islam, said his goal is to show women that they do not have to reveal their beauty to the world in order to be seen.

This Abdallah doesn't seem like the brightest guy around. Did he not know that he could have easily started a broadcast radio station where he wouldn't need to go to such extreme to make his point.

Of course not. His propaganda won't really work. Female anchors on radio would just be like everyone else. And then no one would pay much attention to these women.


Pretty scary.. would you really let your kids watch this?

Parliament with a beard?

That's the label used for the newly elected members of Egypt parliament.

The first Parliament in the Arab world dominated by Islamists — nearly half of its members come from Egypt’s mainstream Muslim Brotherhood and nearly a quarter are from the ultraconservative Salafi movement — is a laboratory for daily experiments in religion and democracy.

A Salafi member of the parliament (from the ultraconservative Salafi Asala Party) decided to interrupt the proceeding by reciting the Adhan (or the Muslim call of prayers).

He was promptly asked to shut-up by the speaker of the parliament, also a Sunni Muslim.

“After you’re done with the call for prayers, I’ll talk to you because you breached the order of the session,” he said. “You’re not more of a Muslim than we are,” Mr. Katatni added, once the call for prayers was over. “You don’t need the media show.” 

I've watched some of the parliamentary session in my own country (very well known for oppressing its Shia minority). We also have plenty of politicians that uses Islam to advance their own political agenda. This isn't something new. I guess that is why some Muslims are sick and tired of Islamic based political parties.

Also, one thing I have noticed about the parliament session is that the session always breaks for lunch and prayer (salat al-dhuhur) and then for teatime-break and prayer (salat al-asr). So I guess the speaker could be right when he said that the politician is just showing off.

What is happening in Egypt?

29 dead since Saturday.

The military rulers in Egypt tried to keep power to themselves by promising to handover the rule to the civilians in 2013. The Egyptians want the military to handover the rule now. So, the military is now promising to step down in July next year. The people are outraged.