The revolution in Egypt was quick - but the aftermath is still unfolding. Here is an eyewitness report from an American living in the popular tourist destination of Luxor, Egypt. While Mubarak's repressive regime is over, there is still concern among those living in Egypt as to how liberal the new military-dominated government will be. Because of this, I'm respecting my friend's anonymity.
"Below is what I sent to my friends and family. I have been waiting to write to you re: the aftermath, but so far things are not too bad. Some dispute yesterday in square because protesters do not want to leave and army clashed with them for a while, banks are closed today and tomorrow as employees went on strike. The biggest problem now is that everyone is protesting for more money - police yesterday, government bank workers today. All the big photos of Mubarak are being taken down from airports and squares everywhere. But please keep in mind I can only talk about Luxor and protesting was very limited here - just against the hated governor.
I myself do not plan to go to Cairo for another 4 weeks for dental work, shopping, etc. ... There is no word about when tourists will be returning. Will keep you advised. I am sure April will be fine. Problem is Delta quit flying here early in revolution and Egypt Air has only limited service right now to USA.
Letter to Friends and Family from Luxor:
I am sorry to be complaining about the stress for at least 15 days of the protest, the loss of sleep, and how my usual good health has been compromised, when some of the protesters were camped out in Tahrir Square and sleeping on the ground and never ate a home cooked meal for at least 10 days. The protest got to the point that they did not dare to go home, because the police would be waiting to arrest them, torture them and throw them in prison. So, there was no way they could leave until Mubarak stepped down. And to prevent the army from using the tanks to cordon off the square area and make the gathering point smaller every day - which was their plan, some of the protesters slept under the tanks so they could not be moved.
The protest on February 25th was the idea of university students for whom this was the first day of the general two week school holiday in the winter and of course, they used Facebook and Twitter to set it up. There were no main organizers or leaders and no big plan and since no more than 4 people can gather in public at the same time, they expected to be arrested. So, the success of this protest took everyone, including the protesters, by surprise. By the time of the Friday prayer on January 28, more and more people started to join these young people inspite of the fact that the internet was closed down over the whole country on January 27 to prevent the continuation of this protest.
And while our mobile phones were never shut off, no one could send text messages for a certain time. Discontent was about high employment, recent results of parliamentary election where only one party ended up being represented - the National Democractic Party of Mubarak, and the cost of living going up - mostly gas and food.
66% of the population of Egypt (83 million people) are under the age of 30, so they have never know another President of Egypt and neither have I, since I started coming here in December of 1981. Mubarak had just become President in October of 1981 after the assassination of President Sadat. Mubarak never even appointed a Vice President in these 29 years - until 2 weeks ago as one of his signs of appeasement. And unemployment for them is 50% or more.
What has distressed me the most is the media coverage and reporting of these daily events. I had Al Jazeera-English, CNN, BBC World and Bloomberg. I am not able to get Press TV and I never watched the Government TV station - Nile TV. Nile TV thought it could broadcast phony scenes of the demonstration in Tahrir Square showing only a few hundred people and that those people who live in small villages and towns would not know what was really going on. Even the poorest people and villages in Egypt have satellite TV even if it is only in one coffee shop, so that propaganda did not work.
And, AlJazeera-English was showing what they were filming and in a split screen what was being filmed in USA over Fox News, for example, and it was full of fear mongering that the Islamic fundamentalists were going to take over the country. Religion was never an issue in this protest and Muslims and Christians alike were demonstrating for the same thing, a new government that would represent the people. "The key to budget travel is to prepare onward. When it occurs to family trips, globetrotting, well-deserved trips and/or going to see new destinations we have never been before, the actuality of expense and budgeting is generally in the back of our minds. Organizing and expending our travel budget properly is a main concern for most families. Curbing consuming and expenses, while still delighting your vacation to its fullest, is the key to certain accomplishment and fiscal liability. Your pocketbook and family will thank you! The thought behind protecting money while vacationing is simple: Even if your personal funds is really small, you can still take a break and enjoy life! Simply put, life is just too short to never step out of the door or departing the homestead! Also remembering that while traveling, whether on a finances or not, even the smallest of things can all add op to a huge vacation or travel charge!..".
Then the government opened up the prisons and let prisoners out so that the people would have to go home to protect their property and families. That turned out to be another bad decision since most of these prisoners were political prisoners that had been held for years with out due process of law and when released - went home to their families, some of who did not even now they were still alive.
Then the government ordered the police to put on regular clothes, and paid very poor people to go to the Square and pretend to be part of the protest - and then turn on the protesters with violence. These pro-government stooges were the only ones to come to Tahrir Square with weapons and this was when most of the only violence in the protest occurred. And the Nile TV also was blaming "foreigners" for this protest and many newsmen and women were attacked who worked for CNN and Al Jazeera and I think many of them said it was more dangerous for them than covering a war.
The protesters themselves set up checkpoints to check people for weapons, to bring food to each other, and it was not the so-called feared Muslim Brotherhood that was in the forefront of this protest, but the brotherhood of Muslims and Christians standing against the regime that had ruled with an iron fist for 29 years.
There was no way to keep the details of this protest from being filmed and recorded by internet, by camera-phone, by mobile phones and over satellite TV. However, I feel the US TV channels, with the exception of CNN, were not giving you the correct information or were just giving you their interpretation of what was happening.
The main concern of the USA was the so-called Peace Pact between Israel and Egypt and the uninterrupted flow of the shipping on the Suez Canal. And while Egypt is given 1.5 billion a year in foreign aid for 83 billion people, Israel is given 3.5 billion for 8 million people, both countries have to turn around and spend at least half of that foreign aid to purchase war planes, weapons and ammunition from the USA.
And then we were already celebrating Friday evening when we were told Mubarak was going to step down and then he did not and people think this was an attempt to get the people to start rioting - and again their "old" tactics did not work.
And now, the Army has taken over, but the very top level has to be changed also, because they also were the cronies of Mubarak and benefited from the corruption that allowed him and his family to become some of the richest people in the world. When Bloomberg TV announced how much Mubarak and his family were worth, it gave more fuel for the protest. When the Google executive was released from 10 days of prison, that gave more fuel to the protest.
All and all, I am very proud of the Egyptian people and very disappointed in the behavior of the American Embassy. They were the first ones to leave the country and there was never any anti-American sentiment shown by the protesters at any time. Then they order all Americans to leave and since there are 90,000 in Egypt, how does that work out? The internet generation in Egypt has freed the country and made their parents proud and given their children the chance for a better life.
We are not sure how many protesters have died, but we do know that thousands are missing - secretly arrested when they were returning home at night. Today there are riots in Algeria and China has been limiting its TV coverage to their people. Must be a revolution virus going on.
I, of course, was lucky to be living in Luxor. We only had the governor to protest against. We did suffer from the loss of the internet for 5 days, sometimes water and electricity were turned off, no banks or ATMs because of internet being off, but we always had our TVs on and our phones working. "
Daily News Egypt - Egypts Only Daily Independent Newspaper In ...
www.dailynewsegypt.comEgypt's only independent daily newspaper in English. Discuss the country's latest with the paper's reporters, editors and other readers.
Egypt at the Manchester Museum Everything Egyptian at the ...
egyptmanchester.wordpress.comEverything Egyptian at the Manchester Museum ... Several months ago, we noticed that one of our Middle Kingdom statuettes was spinning around imperceptibly slowly in ...
History of the Jews in Egypt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_EgyptEgyptian Jews constitute both one of the oldest and youngest Jewish communities in the world. While no exact census exists, the Jewish population of Egypt was ...
Ancient and Modern Egypt - Union College's Egypt Miniterm
egypt.union.eduAncient and Modern Egypt Union College's Egypt Miniterm (December 2013) Ashraf Ghaly, Professor of Engineering
Friends of the Egypt Centre Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-the-Egypt-Centre/...Friends of the Egypt Centre. 374 likes 22 talking about this.
2013 Luxor hot air balloon crash - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Luxor_hot_air_balloon_crashOn 26 February 2013, at 07:00 Egypt Standard Time (05:00 UTC), a hot air balloon crashed near Luxor, Egypt. The crash resulted in 19 deaths out of 21 passengers ...
VIDEO SHOCK! Hot Air Balloon Crash - Luxor Egypt 26 Feb
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wMKxtYXtzMA hot air balloon has crashed near the Egyptian town of Luxor killing 19 tourists who were aboard. One tourist and the balloon pilot have survived the ...
Egypt balloon crash: rescuers scour Luxor site - video World ...
www.guardian.co.uk/.../2013/feb/26/egypt-balloon-crash-luxor-videoMedics and rescue workers attend the scene of a hot air balloon crash on Tuesday in Luxor, Egypt, in which 18 people died. Debris and the remains of the balloon can ...
Moment of hot air balloon crash in Luxor, Egypt caught on
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN7LAC3nUYYAt least 19 foreign tourists, some French, Chinese and Japanese, died in a hot air balloon crash near the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor, a popular tourist ...
Egypt hot air balloon crash: British death toll in Luxor accident ...
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284548Feb 27, 2013 The balloon came down in a ball of flames this morning near Luxor, close to the famous Valley of the Kings. This picture was taken 40 minutes before the crash.
Hot air balloon crash in Egypt kills 18 foreigners - Yahoo! News
news.yahoo.com/hot-air-balloon-crash-egypt-kills-18-foreigners...Feb 26, 2013 LUXOR, Egypt (AP) A hot air balloon flying over Egypt's ancient city of Luxor caught fire and crashed into a sugar cane field on Tuesday, killing at ...
Egypt -- Encyclopedia Britannica
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/180382/EgyptCountry located in the northeastern corner of Africa. Egypts heartland, the Nile River valley and delta, was the home of one of the principal civilizations of the ...
Quotes About Egypt (58 quotes) - Share Book Recommendations
www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/egypt58 quotes have been tagged as egypt: : '. ...
Golden Mummies: What Happened To The Indiana Jones Of Egypt?
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/golden-mummies-what-happe_n...Jul 16, 2012 Zahi Hawass ego hasnt suffered since protesters forced him out of his influential post as Egypts antiquities steward 18 months ago, shortly after ...
Hot air balloon crash in Egypt leaves 19 foreigners dead - NY ...
www.nydailynews.com/news/world/hot-air-balloon-crash-egypt-kills...Feb 26, 2013 Egyptian medics take away the body of a person killed at the site where a a hot air balloon crashed, in a field next to the southern Egyptian town of Luxor ...
All One World Egypt Tours with Ruth Shilling Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/1worldtoursAll One World Egypt Tours with Ruth Shilling. 231 likes 21 talking about this.
egypt economy - Daily News Egypt
www.dailynewsegypt.com/category/business/economyFind all news about banks, reports and domestic markets in Egypt.
International News World News - ABC News
abcnews.go.com/internationalGet the latest international news and events from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and more. See world news photos and videos at ABCNews
Egypt balloon crash kills tourists World news guardian.co.uk
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/26/egypt-balloon-crash-kills-britonsEighteen tourists, including one Briton, have been killed in a hot air balloon crash near the Egyptian city of Luxor, officials say. Two other Britons are believed to ...
Baha'i Faith in Egypt
www.bahai-egypt.orgThe Baha'is of Egypt have been subjected to persecution and systematic oppression. While their quest for equality has been finally heard by many of their fellow ...
Egypt - Conservapedia
www.conservapedia.com/EgyptEgypt is a country located in north-east Africa, and is the site of one of the oldest recorded civilizations on earth. Egypt is currently ruled by the Muslim ...
Sights in Egypt - Lonely Planet
www.lonelyplanet.com/egypt/sightsLonely Planet travellers are voting for the best sight in Egypt. 1 Al-Azhar Park, 2 Animalia, 3 Karnak, 4 Valley of the Kings, 5 Egyptian Museum.
Aftermath News Independent Post-9/11 News
aftermathnews.wordpress.comJun 11, 2013 Independent Post-9/11 News ... phys.org Jun 10, 2013. The MIT Center for International Studies and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars ...
Ancient and Modern Egypt - Union College's Egypt Miniterm
egypt.union.eduAncient and Modern Egypt Union College's Egypt Miniterm (December 2013) Ashraf Ghaly, Professor of Engineering
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Click to see the code!
To insert emoticon you must added at least one space before the code.