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Friday, November 29, 2013

For Egypt’s New Rulers, Familiar Scapegoats

This week, when Egypt’s military-backed government issued arrest warrants for Alaa Abd El Fattah and Ahmed Maher â€" two activist bloggers who helped drive the uprising that forced Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011 only to find themselves blamed for inciting unrest by each successive government â€" the same thought occurred to several readers of their popular Twitter feeds. “The only stability and reliability we have in Egypt,” the journalist Sharif Kouddous joked, “is that successive rulers never fail to arrest @alaa.”

The mood among supporters of the two men turned much darker on Thursday night when Mr. Abd El Fattah’s wife, Manal Hassan, reported that the police had raided their home, dragging off her husband and leaving his blood on the floor.

The English-language news site Mada Masr, which Mr. Abd El Fattah helped design, reported that the raid began at about 10 p.m. local time, when “20 men â€" some of whom were masked and carrying heavy arms â€" broke the door down, entered the house and began confiscating the family’s computers and mobile phones.” According to Ms. Hassan, when her husband asked the officers for a warrant, they beat him and slapped her in the face.

In a statement decrying his arrest, and that of two dozen activists detained at a protest in Cairo on Tuesday, the blogger’s supporters explained that he has now been made a scapegoat for unrest by four successive Egyptian governments:

The persecution of Alaa Abd El Fattah is a recurring theme in Egypt. He was jailed under the Mubarak regime for 45 days and again by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in 2011 - when he returned from giving a keynote speech at a technology conference in San Francisco to turn himself in. He remained in jail for almost two months, missing the birth of his son, Khalid. He also faced trumped up charges designed to intimidate protest under the Morsi government in 2013 along with popular satirist Bassem Youssef.

As Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch suggested, the raid Thursday night seemed excessive given that the suspect was a writer and software developer who had already announced plans to turn himself in at noon on Saturday in a statement broadcast to his 500,000 Twitter followers and sent by telegram and registered letter to the authorities.

Any claim that Mr. Abd El Fattah was a flight risk would seem to be undermined by his behavior two years ago, when he was summoned by a military prosecutor to answer similar charges during a visit to the United States, and chose to return home and face imprisonment rather than seek asylum abroad.

In a video interview recorded in the United States in late 2011, the Egyptian activist blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah explained why he planned to return home despite the threat of persecution.

In a Facebook post explaining his decision, translated into English by his aunt, the novelist Ahdaf Soueif, Mr. Abd El Fattah wrote on Wednesday:

The charge â€" it appears â€" is that I participated in inviting people to protest yesterday, in front of the Shura Council building, against placing â€" for the second time â€" an article in the constitution legitimizing the court-martial of civilians.

The strange thing is that both the Prosecutor and the Ministry of the Interior knew that I was present for 8 hours at First Police Station New Cairo in solidarity with the people arrested yesterday on the same charges. But neither the Prosecutor nor the MOI ordered my arrest at the time or demanded that I be questioned. This probably means that they intend to put on a show where I play the criminal-in-hiding.

So, despite the following facts:

That I do not recognize the anti-protest law that the people have brought down as promptly as they brought down the monument to the military’s massacres â€"

That the legitimacy of the current regime collapsed with the first drop of blood shed in front of the Republican Guard Club â€"

That any possibility of saving this legitimacy vanished when the ruling four (Sisi, Beblawi, Ibrahim and Mansour) committed war crimes during the break-up of the Rab’a sit-in â€"

That the Public Prosecutor’s Office displayed crass subservience when it provided legal cover for the widest campaign of indiscriminate administrative detention in our modern history, locking up young women, injured people, old people and children, and holding in evidence against them balloons and T-shirts â€"

That the clear corruption in the judiciary is to be seen in the overharsh sentences against students whose crime was their anger at the murder of their comrades, set against light sentences and acquittals for the uniformed murderers of those same young people â€"

Despite all this, I have decided to do what I’ve always done and hand myself in to the Public Prosecutor.

I do not deny the charge - even though I cannot claim the honour of bringing the people into the street to challenge the attempts to legitimize the return of the Mubarak state.

As the Egyptian journalist who blogs as Zeinobia reported, within hours of the raid, hackers seized control of the email account and Twitter feed of Mr. Abd El Fattah’s sister, Mona Seif. A fellow-activist who helped found the No Military Trials for Civilians movement, Ms. Seif was detained at a protest on Tuesday and dropped off by the police late that night on a desert road outside Cairo.

While the hackers, who called for Ms. Seif’s arrest, claimed to be from the anarchist group Anonymous, her cousin Omar Robert Hamilton was not alone in suspecting that the Egyptian police were more likely suspects than a group that normally opposes state power.

As Al Jazeera reported in 2006, when Mr. Abd El Fattah continued to post scathing attacks on the Mubarak government on his blog from jail, he comes from a family well-known for resisting the Egyptian security state. His mother, mother, Laila Soueif, told Al Jazeera that her son had moved from being an observer of protests to a participant when he intervened to keep her from being beaten at an antigovernment demonstration in 2005.

“Blogging on the Nile,” a 2006 Al Jazeera report on Egyptian activists, featuring interviews with the family of Alaa Abd El Fattah, who was detained at the time.

His father, Ahmed Seif al-Islam, a human rights lawyer who was jailed for five years during Mubarak’s rule, recently appeared in a video promoting the No to Military Trials for Civilians movement.

A promotional video released this week by the No Military Trials for Civilians movement, featuring testimony by Ahmed Seif al-Islam, the father of Alaa Abd El Fattah and Mona Seif.

Meanwhile, as my colleague Mayy el-Sheikh reported, Egypt’s state-run media suddenly started referring to all activists who are not in the Muslim Brotherhood as either soccer hooligans or members of Mr. Maher’s April 6 movement.

Hours before the raid, the two men had discussed the death of a student protester in clashes with the police at Cairo on Thursday, in a Twitter conversation overheard by hundreds of thousands of their followers.

Video of Egyptian police officers firing tear gas and shotgun pellets at protesters inside Cairo University on Thursday, where one student was killed.

After the student who was killed during the clashes at Cairo University was buried on Friday, prosecutors announced manslaughter charges, not against any police officer, but against four of the student protesters.



The Spectacle and Sales of Black Friday

A video report from NBC 7 San Diego about a stabbing during a Black Friday event in Carlsbad, Calif.

Market analysts researching the buying habits of Americans have noted a growing trend in online shopping on Black Friday, the frenetic day after Thanksgiving when retailers try to boost annual sales with steep discounts.

But consumers who venture out from behind their computer screens to brave the packed parking lots and long lines of brick-and-mortar stores can find themselves in elbows-out, fists-flying confrontations that have traditionally distinguished the start of the most important shopping period of the year.

As my colleague Elizabeth Harris reported, long lines started to form on Thursday, as department and retail stores opened overnight with major deals that went straight into Friday. Some big-box stores posted employees as guides and introduced other safety measures.

But a number of arrests and shootings were reported across the country, while some shoppers or the merely curious shared online footage of the spectacle of people vying for flat-screen televisions or discounted electronics.

Crowds compete for electronics at a Virginia Beach Walmart, according to this YouTube video posted by a witness, Mark Garcia.
Police arrest a woman on Thanksgiving at an unidentified Walmart after a fight over merchandise.

In Romeoville, outside of Chicago, Mark Turvey, the police chief, said in a televised appearance published by The Chicago Tribune that during an attempted arrest, a police officer shot a shoplifting suspect who tried to drive away, dragging the officer with him in a Kohl’s parking lot on Thanksgiving night. The suspect was not believed to be in serious condition.

In California, the Carlsbad Police Department said in a statement that just after midnight, officers arrested Javier Covarrubias, 18, a suspect in the stabbing of another man at the El Camino Real mall.

On Thanksgiving day, the Carlsbad police had issued safety guidelines to holiday shoppers on its Twitter account showing, somewhat unrealistically, a photograph of an older woman with her arms full of new toys in an aisle completely empty of other shoppers.

The Las Vegas Metro Police Department said they were investigating a shooting near a Target store involving an attempted robbery of a man carrying home a new flat-screen television, the local news site 8 News NOW reported.

The Star-Ledger reported that a man was pepper-sprayed by the police at a Walmart in Garfield, N.J., after he became belligerent. The man, Richard Ramos, 23, was arrested, the newspaper said in its online report.

In Virginia, the television station WVVA reported that two men were arrested after an argument at a Claypool Hill Walmart escalated into a nonfatal stabbing of one of them.



The Spectacle and Sales of Black Friday

A video report from NBC 7 San Diego about a stabbing during a Black Friday event in Carlsbad, Calif.

Market analysts researching the buying habits of Americans have noted a growing trend in online shopping on Black Friday, the frenetic day after Thanksgiving when retailers try to boost annual sales with steep discounts.

But consumers who venture out from behind their computer screens to brave the packed parking lots and long lines of brick-and-mortar stores can find themselves in elbows-out, fists-flying confrontations that have traditionally distinguished the start of the most important shopping period of the year.

As my colleague Elizabeth Harris reported, long lines started to form on Thursday, as department and retail stores opened overnight with major deals that went straight into Friday. Some big-box stores posted employees as guides and introduced other safety measures.

But a number of arrests and shootings were reported across the country, while some shoppers or the merely curious shared online footage of the spectacle of people vying for flat-screen televisions or discounted electronics.

Crowds compete for electronics at a Virginia Beach Walmart, according to this YouTube video posted by a witness, Mark Garcia.
Police arrest a woman on Thanksgiving at an unidentified Walmart after a fight over merchandise.

In Romeoville, outside of Chicago, Mark Turvey, the police chief, said in a televised appearance published by The Chicago Tribune that during an attempted arrest, a police officer shot a shoplifting suspect who tried to drive away, dragging the officer with him in a Kohl’s parking lot on Thanksgiving night. The suspect was not believed to be in serious condition.

In California, the Carlsbad Police Department said in a statement that just after midnight, officers arrested Javier Covarrubias, 18, a suspect in the stabbing of another man at the El Camino Real mall.

On Thanksgiving day, the Carlsbad police had issued safety guidelines to holiday shoppers on its Twitter account showing, somewhat unrealistically, a photograph of an older woman with her arms full of new toys in an aisle completely empty of other shoppers.

The Las Vegas Metro Police Department said they were investigating a shooting near a Target store involving an attempted robbery of a man carrying home a new flat-screen television, the local news site 8 News NOW reported.

The Star-Ledger reported that a man was pepper-sprayed by the police at a Walmart in Garfield, N.J., after he became belligerent. The man, Richard Ramos, 23, was arrested, the newspaper said in its online report.

In Virginia, the television station WVVA reported that two men were arrested after an argument at a Claypool Hill Walmart escalated into a nonfatal stabbing of one of them.



Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Comet ISON to Approach Sun on Thanksgiving

Comet ISON is expected to near the sun at 1:37 p.m. Eastern time on Thanksgiving.

After astronomers worried that Comet ISON had dimmed, they now say the comet is on track for its close approach to the sun at 1:37 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, passing about 730,000 miles above the sun’s surface.

At that distance, the comet will actually be within the sun’s atmosphere, or corona.

When we reported in recent days on ISON’s approach, some astronomers said they thought it might have fallen apart. But then the comet brightened up again. On Wednesday afternoon, Karl Battams, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory, reported that ISON was still “a very healthy sungrazing comet!”

Dr. Battams and other astronomers are at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona observing ISON. NASA’s sun-watching spacecraft are also taking close note of the comet, which spent most of the last 4.5 billion years in the farthest reaches of the solar system.

Because ISON appears to be a pristine relic of the very beginnings of the solar system, scientists hope to glean clues on how the bits of dust and ice came together to form planets.

Will ISON survive its close encounter? “Unfortunately,” Dr. Battams wrote, “the answer is not particularly satisfying: we will not know if ISON will survive until it actually does so, or gets vaporized before our very eyes!”

Regardless of what happens, there is no chance that ISON could pose any danger to Earth, Dr. Battams said.

Even if it dies, the comet could still give off an impressive light show.

Last year, another sungrazing comet, named Lovejoy, appeared to have survived its passage through the corona, but it later became apparent that its nucleus had disintegrated. Nonetheless, its remnants provided a spectacular night sky for people in the Southern Hemisphere. This time, it will be people in the Northern Hemisphere who may get the good view of the comet show.



Comet ISON to Approach Sun on Thanksgiving

Comet ISON is expected to near the sun at 1:37 p.m. Eastern time on Thanksgiving.

After astronomers worried that Comet ISON had dimmed, they now say the comet is on track for its close approach to the sun at 1:37 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, passing about 730,000 miles above the sun’s surface.

At that distance, the comet will actually be within the sun’s atmosphere, or corona.

When we reported in recent days on ISON’s approach, some astronomers said they thought it might have fallen apart. But then the comet brightened up again. On Wednesday afternoon, Karl Battams, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory, reported that ISON was still “a very healthy sungrazing comet!”

Dr. Battams and other astronomers are at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona observing ISON. NASA’s sun-watching spacecraft are also taking close note of the comet, which spent most of the last 4.5 billion years in the farthest reaches of the solar system.

Because ISON appears to be a pristine relic of the very beginnings of the solar system, scientists hope to glean clues on how the bits of dust and ice came together to form planets.

Will ISON survive its close encounter? “Unfortunately,” Dr. Battams wrote, “the answer is not particularly satisfying: we will not know if ISON will survive until it actually does so, or gets vaporized before our very eyes!”

Regardless of what happens, there is no chance that ISON could pose any danger to Earth, Dr. Battams said.

Even if it dies, the comet could still give off an impressive light show.

Last year, another sungrazing comet, named Lovejoy, appeared to have survived its passage through the corona, but it later became apparent that its nucleus had disintegrated. Nonetheless, its remnants provided a spectacular night sky for people in the Southern Hemisphere. This time, it will be people in the Northern Hemisphere who may get the good view of the comet show.



Crackdown in Egypt Fuels New Dissent

Video shot by Simon Hanna for the Egyptian news site Ahram Online showed protesters defying a new ban on demonstrations in downtown Cairo on Wednesday night.

There were street protests in Egypt’s two largest cites on Wednesday, amid signs that attempts to stifle dissent by the military-backed government were fueling a backlash.

Thousands of protesters marched in downtown Cairo, defying a new law that effectively bans demonstrations, and there was widespread anger on social networks at the harsh prison sentences handed down by a court in Alexandria to young, female supporters of the ousted Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi.

While the activists who marched in Cairo were clear about their opposition to both the current military chief, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, and the former president, Mr. Morsi, even fierce opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood expressed shock that the young Islamists had been sentenced to 11 years in jail for waving placards and holding balloons at a protest last month.

As the rights activist Heba Morayef explained, anger at the sentences was intensified by the fact that several of the young women were minors.

Faced with growing unrest, the authorities issued warrants for the arrest of two prominent activists, Ahmed Maher and Alaa Abd El Fattah. The fact that both men have been persecuted by successive Egyptian governments gave rise to a number of sardonic comments from activists and journalists on Wednesday.

For their part, both men attacked the decision in messages posted on their popular Twitter feed, which are read by nearly 700,000 people.



Kerry and Zarif Turn to Selling Nuclear Deal to Skeptics Back Home

A video message from Secretary of State John Kerry outlining the nuclear deal with Iran.

Having finally reached an interim agreement to freeze Iran’s nuclear program in Geneva on Saturday, Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, turned their attention this week to selling the deal to skeptics back home.

Perhaps taking a leaf from Mr. Zarif’s playbook, Mr. Kerry recorded a YouTube video to outline the deal’s terms to members of Congress and the American people, and correct what he called “misinformation” spread by opponents of the agreement. Responding to critics who have accused him of “appeasement,” Mr. Kerry insisted, “We drove a very hard bargain.”

As the BBC Persian correspondent Bahman Kalbasi noted on Twitter, Mr. Kerry’s statement is also, in part, a sort of introductory lecture on the basics of uranium enrichment and what it takes to make a nuclear bomb.

Meanwhile in Tehran, Mr. Zarif appeared on state television to explain and defend the nuclear deal while his ministry shared links to interviews with citizens who praised him for reaching an agreement with the United States and five other world powers. Arguing for the agreement, Mr. Zarif was quick to point out that it was described by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as “the deal of the century, for Iran.”

Video of Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javed Zarif, defending the nuclear deal on state television this week.

The sense that Iran’s government is mobilizing in support of the deal was reinforced by the way public opinion on the agreement was presented on television. In a series of interviews with ordinary citizens â€" underscored by uplifting music and interspersed with images of reactors and centrifuges â€" one person after another described the deal as a positive development for the country.

Television interviews conducted this week in Iran, in which citizens expressed their support for the nuclear deal.

Iranians praising their foreign minister for negotiating the nucelar deal.



A Defaced Gap Ad Goes From the Subway to the Web to Its Demise

As the New York City-based photographer Robert Gerhardt waited last Sunday for the No. 6 subway train to take him from the Bronx to Manhattan, he spotted a poster from Gap’s “Make Love” ad campaign. It featured a female model and a man wearing the distinctive turban of the Sikh religion.

Someone had defaced the advertisement, crossing out the word “Love” and replacing it with “Bombs!” Another line of graffiti scrawled underneath, in a different hand, read: “Please Stop Driving Taxis!”

So Mr. Gerhardt, 36, who has been documenting the lives of Muslims in the United States for years, took out his camera and posted a photograph of the defaced ad on his Facebook page and on Instagram. “It was anti-Muslim graffiti on a man who is clearly Sikh but was being confused as a Muslim,” Mr. Gerhardt told The Lede. “Hatred doesn’t ever seem to go away.”

Shortly after Mr. Gerhardt uploaded the image, Arsalan Iftikhar, a senior editor for Islamic Monthly, saw it and shared it with about 40,000 followers on Twitter and on Facebook. Reza Aslan, a historian and professor, also shared it online.

It finally came to the attention of Gap, which wrote to Mr. Iftikhar on Twitter asking for the location of the graffiti-scrawled ad.

The man in the advertisement is Waris Ahluwalia, a jewelry designer and actor. The woman is Quentin Jones, an illustrator and filmmaker.

On Wednesday, Mr. Ahluwalia told his Facebook followers, “Make sure to say thank you to those awesome Taxi drivers that take you places,” linking to a BBC report on the difficulties drivers face in New York City.

And Ms. Jones wrote on Twitter, referring to the ad:

Mr. Iftikhar said on Wednesday that Gap was displaying the picture as the background art on its Twitter account @Gap.

In response to a reporter’s query, Gap said that it was not answering questions about the graffiti, but added, in part:

Gap is a brand that celebrates inclusion and diversity. Our customers and employees are of many different ethnicities, faiths and lifestyles and we support them all.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Gerhardt, the photographer, returned to the same Pelham Bay subway platform at Buhre Avenue in the Bronx, which he regularly uses, and noticed that the advertisement was no longer there.

In its place was a poster for a Tyler Perry movie, “A Madea Christmas.”



Tracking Holiday Travel Delays in Real Time

FlightAware, an online flight tracking service, shows the percentage of delays and cancellations in red on its “MiseryMap” across the country in real time.

Updated 1:12 p.m. Most air travelers were able to avoid major delays Tuesday as a powerful storm moved up the East Coast and into the mid-Atlantic states. But on Wednesday, the busiest travel day of this Thanksgiving holiday week, they may not be so lucky, according to FlightAware’s online, real-time interactive map.

With heavy rain and wind gusts up to 60 miles per hour reported along the East Coast this morning, the storm began affecting airline operations by 7 a.m. in Philadelphia and New York’s three major airports, causing a ripple effect at airports across the country.

More than 150 flights were canceled out of Philadelphia and New York airports on Wednesday, according to FlightAware. But the delays and flight cancellations have not been nearly as bad as many meteorologists had been predicting earlier this week. There was initial concern that the heavy rain and strong winds moving up the East Coast would collide with a storm system, over the Great Lakes, that produced snow in western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and western New York state.

While passengers were scheduled to board 1,300 flights across the country this morning, drivers make up the majority of the 43 million people expected to travel more than 50 miles this holiday week.

On Wednesday morning, motorists found heavy rain had eventually tapered off along the busy Interstate 95 corridor. Snow-covered, icy roads could be found in parts of West Virginia, western and central Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, and western New York State, as my colleagues, Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Timothy Williams reported.

Here’s a look at what meteorologists and local airport officials are saying about the weather and holiday travel up and down the East Coast on Wednesday:

In Philadelphia, airport officials on Wednesday have been actively using an official Twitter account, @PHLAirport, to keep travelers updated on conditions.

For motorists in the Philadelphia area, flooding and a deadly crash that killed one person and injured seven others early Wednesday morning on the Schuylkill Expressway, Interstate 76, near the Montgomery Drive exit, snarled traffic for both commuters and holiday travelers.

For the New York City metropolitan area, the National Weather Service’s regional office in Upton, N.Y. issued a flood warning in parts of the area and wind advisory, warning of gusts up to 60 m.p.h.

In New England, the National Weather Service in Boston identified strong winds and heavy rain as the primary threats for travelers on Wednesday. Boston’s Logan Airport reported some delays and the winds brought down power lines, causing power failures in some parts of the Boston area as the storm headed north toward Maine.

Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport was reporting no delays early Wednesday.

For the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang blog reported that the rain could turn to light snow later on Wednesday but the rest of the holiday weekend would be dry. And Thanksgiving Day? Cold.

In central Pennsylvania, the National Weather Service issued an ice storm warning with freezing rain coating roads and trees.

A possible tornado touched down late Tuesday night along the North Carolina coast, in the Atlantic Beach area near Morehead City, downing power lines. The Associated Press reported three people were injured when a roof blew off their condominium.

On the other side of North Carolina, snow was falling in the west. And spotted in Atlanta.

In Atlanta, Kathryn Prociv and Heather Hunter, producers for the Weather Channel, noted on Twitter that snow flakes were falling outside the studio early Wednesday morning, a significant weather event for Atlanta.



Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Egypt’s Jon Stewart on Comedy and Politics

During the administration of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s deposed president, Muslim Brotherhood partisans sought unsuccessfully to try Bassem Youssef, an Egyptian satirist and late-night talk show host, on charges of “insulting the president.” After Mr. Morsi was overthrown in the summer, Egyptians tuned in eagerly to the season premiere of Mr. Youssef’s show in October to see if he would lampoon their new military rulers as harshly as he had the Islamists. His jokes clearly made an impact: One week later his show was abruptly suspended. Now he faces dozens of accusations of “insulting the military” â€" a potential crime.

In New York to accept an award for press freedom from the Committee to Project Journalists, Mr. Youssef, sometimes called the Jon Stewart of Egypt, spoke with The Lede about the future of his show, the turbulent political situation in Egypt and what it is like to be a comedian in a country plagued by violence, division and uncertainty.

Q.

Egypt’s military-backed government appears to enjoy widespread public support. General Sisi in particular seems to be the subject of strong affection from much of the public. Some observers said that the first, and only, episode of your show that aired this season tread carefully when it came to the military, and did not criticize them or General Sisi directly. Did the political environment influence the decisions you made on your show?

A.

The show is just a mirror for what’s happening in Egypt. Some people want to consider the show as some sort of a weapon where they can hit or attack whoever they don’t like. This is not the case. It’s a political satire show. People always think that I did not do enough or I did not say enough or I did not criticize enough. This was the case during the Muslim Brotherhood and this is the case right now. On the other side, there are people who said that I have crossed over all the boundaries.

Q.

Egypt is beginning to see more active dissent against the new government, with non-Islamist activists staging two antigovernment protests in the last week. Why do you think this dissent is bubbling up now?

A.

It is a very subjective way to measure things. People think they are having increased popularity every day and other people think they are losing popularity. You really can’t tell. There are people actually having an increasing affection for the government and an increasing affection for General Sisi and an increasing affection for the military. Other people are losing it. Some people are gaining compassion towards the Muslim Brotherhood and other people are hating them more. The mistake that people do is that they say, “People are doing so,” or “People are doing so.” “People” is a very generic term. Who can say that people have an increasing or decreasing sentiment towards something or against something? It’s a huge country and it’s very diverse. The government as it is right now, I think it is losing some popularity with many people because of the stupidity of some of the media outlets. They are provoking people and pushing them towards the other side. This I can say, but again it is ery hard to quantify.

Q.

One of the slogans of the revolution that overthrew former President Mubarak was “bread, freedom and social justice.” Do you think the demands of the revolution are still relevant today? Is Egypt moving in the right direction?

A.

At the point of 30th of June, many people thought in the mentality of “it’s either us or them.” The Muslim Brotherhood thought this way and the anti-Muslim Brotherhood thought this way. Everybody suddenly is into survival mode, so some people would say, “Let’s delay the slogans of the revolution because now we are looking for security, which is more important.” Other people are still loyal to these three demands, and other people are just thinking of revenge.

You know here in the United States, you had I think the Declaration of Independence was like 1776. Right? 1776, right? The independence? What, that’s your history, you don’t know it? And it took 12 years to write the first Constitution. And during the 12 years it was full of turmoil and it was hard and it was violent and militias were killing each other in the streets. There is a pile-up of problems: social, economic, religious, sectarian, you name it, in Egypt, and they will not go away.

Q.

Under the Morsi administration you were investigated by the judiciary for insulting the president, and after the first episode of your show’s second season aired there were court cases filed against you for insulting the military. Can you tell us about those cases?

A.

I am told that there are over 40 accusations against me. So far, I have not been summoned by the general prosecutor. I have not been requested to appear for an investigation.

Q.

You received a lot of public support when you were being investigated for insulting Morsi, from both inside and outside Egypt. Have people been supportive of you during these most recent cases?

A.

Well, there has been some support from outside of Egypt and from inside Egypt. Some people are very happy that I am being taken to questioning. I mean, of course the M.B. have absolutely no compassion for me and some of the people who are ultra-military supporters think that this is the right thing to do, that I should go away.

Q.

You were a strong critic of President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. What do you make of the position they now find themselves in, having gone from the ruling party to a splintered and outcast group?

A.

The Muslim Brotherhood did not listen to many of our warnings last year. We told them that you are actually bringing yourself down and you are bringing everybody else down. They did not listen. They were on a power trip. I mean, when I look back a few months ago, the last two big speeches with Morsi he totally allied himself with the extreme right, the extreme jihadist and Qaeda sympathizers, and it made it very difficult for many people to see their president being supported by those people.

Worst-case scenario, many people if they are faced with a choice between an extremist religious government or a dictatorship supported by the military, they will choose the military because at least the military will leave you the personal space. They will block you at the political space, but with an extreme religious government it will block both spaces for you. Again, there are two evils. [Morsi] just went too far and he alienated everybody. He alienated the media, the lawmakers, even the people who supported him in the beginning. And suddenly he was left alone only backed up by the extreme jihadists. And that was used as an excuse for exceptional measures afterwards. And now the Muslim Brotherhood again are thinking of themselves. I totally understand what they have gone through, but they did not see it happening, or they saw it and they ignored it, and now we are all paying for this, not just them.

Q.

Your show was abruptly pulled off the air on Nov. 1, just minutes before the second episode of the second season was supposed to be broadcast. There was a great deal of speculation that you might have angered the military with your season premiere, or that you might have angered the management of your former network, CBC. What happened?

A.

The official story for that was that the channel pulled us off air because of financial reasons. That’s their side of the story. We don’t understand how this will be grounds because we already delivered the episode as we were supposed to. That would make sense if we did not continue shooting, but they just cut us off. They did not even give us a chance to abide by our side of the contract. Were they being pressured? They said they weren’t. Did the upper circles of power dictate that? There is no proof that this happened. Were the lower circles of power thinking they made favors for the upper circles of power, and they told them to do that and they responded? Maybe. But we don’t know.

So the official story stands that it’s a legal and financial issue, which really doesn’t make sense.

Q.

It seems counterintuitive if your show is the most popular in Egypt that there would be any kind of financial impediment to it being aired.

A.

They say we did not honor our agreement, but they had an episode and they did not show it, and then they stopped the program. I don’t know what is their definition of financial issues.

Q.

What is the future of your show?

A.

This show represents the hard work of so many people involved in it, and it’s a shame for it to be stopped, so I will do my absolute best to bring it back on air on any other channel. Again, legal-wise I’m not actually allowed to speak further because we are already having legal problems with CBC. So we will see. But hopefully we want to come back on air.

Q.

There have been reports that your show could move to the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Would you take your show to a non-Egyptian channel?

A.

The news is not true. Deutsche Welle is just one channel who are interested. We have received numerous offers from inside Egypt, from Egyptian channels and Arabic channels based in Egypt, like MBC and Rotana, and we are considering all the offers. But having a German screen be our first run, not the second run, is a little bit iffy, and I don’t think I will go with that. Maybe as a second run. But your primary source has to be an Egyptian or an Arab screen broadcast from inside Media City in Egypt, and we will still have our theater in the middle of Egypt next to Tahrir Square. We cannot change that, even though we were offered much more money. We will not go with that.

Q.

What role has the Egyptian media played in the country’s political life since Morsi’s ouster in July?

A.

Many of the Egyptian anchors went to the extreme. The narrative they have been using was quite provocative, inciting more violence and hate. Sometimes you can understand that because some of these people were on a hit list. I was one of those people on a hit list if Morsi would have continued. So maybe they took it on a more emotional level, because everybody went into survival mode. But some of them really took it too hard, and the one thing that really bothers me is the lack of professionalism of these people. I mean, you’re entitled to say whatever opinion you want even if it [angers] a lot of people, but a lot of them are using fake news from Facebook or Twitter, and using fake websites to prove a point. And that’s not honest. That’s my biggest problem with these news outlets.

Q.

When you say that you and others were on a hit list, do you mean that you were threatened with physical violence?

A.

There was a list of the names of media people that would have been incarcerated, there actually were orders given by the Ministry of the Interior, but they did not execute the orders to actually round us up and put us in jail. I think there was a list of 21 or 25 names. So you might understand how they’re taking it too hard because again, it’s either us or them, and this is the name of the game right now in Egypt.

Q.

Do you ever feel intimidated by your opponents? Do you engage in self-censorship sometimes, or spend much time thinking about what you could and could not put on the air?

A.

There is self-censorship everywhere. Everybody has his own self-censorship. Even during Morsi’s rule, we were very careful about what to put on air because at that time you were dealing with the red line of religion, and a lot of people are very sensitive about religion. Now you are dealing with the red line of the military. People are very sensitive about the red line of the military. It’s not more or less, it’s just different. And you have to understand that we have never been as polarized as now. The thing is, we are trying to make as much sense as possible for the most people. You won’t do it, you will fail most of the time, but you do your best.

It’s difficult times, and maybe it’s the worst time to have a political satire show. It’s not a relaxed, laid-back environment. That hasn’t been there for the past three years. It’s very difficult. You have sectarian violence, you have terrorism, you have street violence, how can you actually make fun of this? That is my greatest challenge. To make people laugh during this. It’s very hard.

Q.

You are being honored by the Committee to Protect Journalists tonight with a press freedom award. In a political environment as fraught of Egypt’s, what role do you think comedians play?

A.

Comedy is an incredible secret weapon for people to express themselves in very unusual ways. Maybe it takes the tension out of really tense situations, and makes them rethink their positions through comedy. It’s a very tricky path.

Q.

The last three years have been very turbulent for Egypt, since the revolution that overthrew Mubarak. Looking back, what do you think have been the most important lessons from that time?

A.

The most important lessons? That Egypt is totally unpredictable, and if you think you’ve got it figured out you’re wrong. And we are doing a very, very good job being the soap opera of the world. It’s too dramatic. We’re drama queens of the news right now. We’re always in the news.

Q.

You have been harshly criticized across the political spectrum since the start of the revolution, but does the criticism you have received since Morsi’s ouster feel different? Did you anticipate that you would find yourself in this position after Morsi fell?

A.

We anticipated that many people would not continue to like us because we knew that we would [anger] a lot of people. But the thing is that we will [anger] extremists on both sides, and it is a very good way to filter out your audience and your fans. But you know what’s the good thing about it is that everybody will still watch you. My approval rating at the time of Morsi was 50/50 and my approval rating after Morsi is still 50/50. The viewership was increasing because everybody watched the program whether they love it or they hate it. It’s very weird. They watch it then to curse us later. It’s a controversial program, and we’re not there to make friends. And a lot of people have understood or thought that we are there to defend their feelings, as if we are their hit men to go and make fun of people they don’t like. We don’t operate this way. We have a product, it’s out there, if you like it you can buy it and if you don’t like it you can just walk away. The thing is they buy it and then hey complain about it later, so you know, it’s not our fault.



An ‘Unimaginable Milestone’ for an American Hostage in Iran

In the wake of its diplomatic success over Iran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration on Tuesday urged Iranian officials to help secure the release of a former F.B.I. agent who went missing in 2007 in Iran.

It is the second time in recent months that the White House has sought Iranian help in connection with the missing investigator, Robert A. Levinson.

Video released in 2011 showing Robert A. Levinson alive.

In September, President Obama called his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, to personally ask that he help resolve Mr. Levinson’s case as well as assist in the release of two Americans held in Iranian prisons.

The latest request follows this week’s breakthrough on an interim nuclear deal between global powers and Iran.

Mr. Levinson, who worked as a private investigator after he retired from the F.B.I., disappeared on Kish Island in March 2007. He had gone there to meet an American, Dawud Salahuddin, who had fled the United States in 1980 after assassinating an aide to the former shah of Iran near his home outside Washington.

Mr. Levinson was last seen alive in a hostage videotape that was publicly released in 2011. His family appealed to his captors for his release in a message that accompanied the video, and posted it on their YouTube channel: Help Bob Levinson.

If he is still alive, Mr. Levinson is now one of the longest Americans held in captivity.

A photograph sent to the family of Robert Levinson in 2011, four years after the former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent went missing in Iran.Courtesy of the Levinson family A photograph sent to the family of Robert Levinson in 2011, four years after the former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent went missing in Iran.

In a statement released this week on a website set up by the family, Mr. Levinson’s wife, Christine, said this Thanksgiving would be the seventh one spent without her husband. The couple has seven children and since Mr. Levinson’s disappearance, several grandchildren have been born.

She said Tuesday is “an unimaginable milestone” for her husband, who disappeared on March 9, 2007.

On this day, Bob will become the longest-held American hostage, surpassing Terry Anderson who was held captive for 2,454 days.‎

No one would have predicted this terrible moment more than six and a half years ago when Bob disappeared. Our family will soon gather for our seventh Thanksgiving without Bob, and the pain will be almost impossible to bear. Yet, as we endure this terrible nightmare from which we can not wake, we know that we must bear it for Bob, the most extraordinary man we have ever known.

To whoever is holding Bob, I ask again for your mercy. Please let him go to reunite with his family.

In its statement on Tuesday, the White House directly asked Iranian officials again for help. “We respectfully ask the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to assist us in securing Mr. Levinson’s health, welfare, and safe return,” the statement said.



An ‘Unimaginable Milestone’ for an American Hostage in Iran

In the wake of its diplomatic success over Iran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration on Tuesday urged Iranian officials to help secure the release of a former F.B.I. agent who went missing in 2007 in Iran.

It is the second time in recent months that the White House has sought Iranian help in connection with the missing investigator, Robert A. Levinson.

Video released in 2011 showing Robert A. Levinson alive.

In September, President Obama called his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, to personally ask that he help resolve Mr. Levinson’s case as well as assist in the release of two Americans held in Iranian prisons.

The latest request follows this week’s breakthrough on an interim nuclear deal between global powers and Iran.

Mr. Levinson, who worked as a private investigator after he retired from the F.B.I., disappeared on Kish Island in March 2007. He had gone there to meet an American, Dawud Salahuddin, who had fled the United States in 1980 after assassinating an aide to the former shah of Iran near his home outside Washington.

Mr. Levinson was last seen alive in a hostage videotape that was publicly released in 2011. His family appealed to his captors for his release in a message that accompanied the video, and posted it on their YouTube channel: Help Bob Levinson.

If he is still alive, Mr. Levinson is now one of the longest Americans held in captivity.

A photograph sent to the family of Robert Levinson in 2011, four years after the former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent went missing in Iran.Courtesy of the Levinson family A photograph sent to the family of Robert Levinson in 2011, four years after the former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent went missing in Iran.

In a statement released this week on a website set up by the family, Mr. Levinson’s wife, Christine, said this Thanksgiving would be the seventh one spent without her husband. The couple has seven children and since Mr. Levinson’s disappearance, several grandchildren have been born.

She said Tuesday is “an unimaginable milestone” for her husband, who disappeared on March 9, 2007.

On this day, Bob will become the longest-held American hostage, surpassing Terry Anderson who was held captive for 2,454 days.‎

No one would have predicted this terrible moment more than six and a half years ago when Bob disappeared. Our family will soon gather for our seventh Thanksgiving without Bob, and the pain will be almost impossible to bear. Yet, as we endure this terrible nightmare from which we can not wake, we know that we must bear it for Bob, the most extraordinary man we have ever known.

To whoever is holding Bob, I ask again for your mercy. Please let him go to reunite with his family.

In its statement on Tuesday, the White House directly asked Iranian officials again for help. “We respectfully ask the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to assist us in securing Mr. Levinson’s health, welfare, and safe return,” the statement said.



Prominent Egyptian Activists Detained for Protesting Under New Law

Video of Egyptian police dispersing a protest in Cairo on Tuesday recorded by Mosireen, a collective of activist filmmakers.

Using new powers to stifle dissent granted this week by Egypt’s military-backed government, riot police officers dispersed a peaceful protest outside the Parliament in Cairo on Tuesday and detained several prominent activists.

Video posted online by Mosireen, a collective of activist filmmakers, showed police officers aiming a water cannon directly at protesters chanting against military rule outside the upper house of Parliament, known as the Shura Council. According to video journalists from the independent Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, the police quickly escalated from spraying water to firing tear gas and roughly detaining protesters, even though the demonstration was almost immediately dispersed.

A video report from Al-Masry Al-Youm, an independent Egyptian news site, showing protesters being detained in Cairo on Tuesday.

Video of protesters being detained by the police in Cairo on Tuesday, from Al-Masry Al-Youm.

More video of the dispersal, from the news site El Badil, showed that several of the protesters knelt down in front of the officers just before the water canon was fired at them.

The Egyptian journalist Sharif Kouddous reported that the police attacked protesters as they fled, just one of the ways they apparently exceeded their authority under the new law.

The rights activist and lawyer Ragia Omran reported that dozens of protesters were arrested, including the leaders of the No Military Trials for Civilians movement, which organized the demonstration against a provision of the new constitution that would permit the practice.

Mona Seif, a founder of the group, was among those arrested. Before her phone battery lost power, Ms. Seif managed to transmit a list of those detained to her @Monasosh Twitter feed from custody.

Activists reported that the detainees were beaten and sexually harassed in custody.

Photographs and video posted online by activists later showed that protesters regrouped later in nearby parts of the city, including Talaat Harb, near Tahrir Square, until they were again dispersed by the police.


Ustream video of protesters chanting against military rule in Cairo’s Talaat Harb Square on Tuesday night before the police arrived.

The activist blogger Tarek Shalby, who took part in the Tahrir Square sit-in that drove President Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011, streamed live video from his phone of Talaat Harb filled with tear gas after it was cleared by the police.

As my colleague Kareem Fahim reports, late Tuesday a small number of protesters also gathered again outside the Shura Council.

After the crackdown on Tuesday, Egyptian bloggers who have charted the struggle against authoritarianism since 2011 wondered just how far the clock had been set back by the implementation of the new anti-protest law.



Monday, November 25, 2013

Egyptians Vow to Fight New Protest Ban

Video of antimilitary protesters marking a third year of rebellion in Tahrir Square in Cairo last week from Mosireen, a collective of activist filmmakers.

As my colleague David Kirkpatrick reports from Cairo, the military-backed government that came to power in Egypt after mass demonstrations issued a new law that effectively banned mass demonstrations on Sunday.

Soon after the measure giving the Ministry of Interior broad power to prohibit or disperse protests was signed into law, Heba Morayef, the Egypt director of Human Rights Watch, began dissecting it on Twitter.

While the new law was roundly mocked online by bloggers and journalists in Cairo, activists from the April 6 movement, who helped organize the Jan. 25, 2011, protests that eventually forced Hosni Mubarak from power, immediately applied for a permit to organize a protest against the antiprotest law this week.

Later on Monday, Ahmed Maher, a founder of April 6, retweeted an image posted online by another member of the group, showing a poster dated 1919 that read: “Demonstrations are prohibited by order of the British Military Governor.”

The organizers of the No Military Trials for Civilians group also said that they planned to go ahead with a previously scheduled, but unlicensed, protest.

Twenty local rights groups signed a statement posted on the website of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights deploring the new law. In a long Facebook commentary on the new law, Karim Medhat Ennarah, who researches criminal justice matters for the rights initiative, wrote:

I’ve had the chance to work on many protest law proposals since the revolution (with all that that entails, including engaging really evil people in the government on the content of the laws). I don’t even remember the number of draft legislation that were pushed through by governments/parliaments/interim parliaments in the last 3 years (at least 2 during the life of the parliament under SCAF, and between draft legislation leaked to the media from the MoJ and ones that actually made it to Shura council, there were at least 6 in the last year. Under the current administration, the third modified draft is the one that was successfully passed). The common denominator between all of them was that they clearly reflected how the state perceives protest: a crime in the making and a misuse of public space, and every single one of these draft proposals was an attempt to control public space and â€" as much as power dynamics allowed â€" to criminalise protest.

Most of these attempts failed spectacularly, this government is simply the first one to have enough leverage and power to be able to push this through. SCAF did not have that, nor did the Morsi government. Back then our main argument against it was this: we scoffed at them and told them that their attempts to look mighty and powerful will backfire because they don’t have the resources to implement such laws and they will end up looking like idiots. This government might have been able to consolidate its power in a way its predecessors were never able to, but I don’t think that’s going to last very long. This law is still unimplementable (in a comprehensive rather than a selective manner) unless they decide to spend all state resources on chasing demonstrators all day because demonstrations just don’t stop.

As my colleague Kareem Fahim and the Cairo-based journalist Aaron Rose noted, there were protesters in the streets of the Egyptian capital on Sunday when the new law was published.

While those student protesters rallied again on Monday, an activist blogger who lives above Tahrir Square posted an image of that public space entirely sealed off by the military.