The Sin Of Greed

http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/

That link is for all those that don’t know what’s going on or don’t have a clear view on this. It’s a blog that is run and written by people living in Egypt. They update almost daily with pictures and sometimes videos.

This revolution was long coming and Tunisia showed the youth what they can do with Facebook and Twitter. It showed them that it is possible. Mubarak has been running a police state for decades while letting the economy go down the drain. People go to college and university but end up with no job no matter what they studied because the job market is dead there. You need to know someone to get anywhere which is kind of like how the US is heading right now with it’s job market. When I was over there, the streets were filled with male and female youths just wandering the streets, not shopping or anything. Most of them college graduates.

As MuertoMushroom previously said here, the average Egyptian is poor.  Meat is a luxury. When I was younger, I remembered the beasts of burden used to be healthier and stronger and now they’re as starved as most of the people. The Egyptian pound used to be only a dollar and some change less in value than the USD, but now it’s almost 6 Egyptian pounds to a USD. Then there’s the constant oppressive police presence on the streets of Egypt. Police brutality and corruption is horrible over there. Worst yet is that the people have nowhere to turn to for justice in Egypt. Mubarak has not only been silencing and brutalizing those that become too religious, he has also been targeting free thinkers, agnostics and/or atheists. Especially those that are bloggers or those that write for any domestic publications.

Which brings me to the women. Believe it or not, women are as much a part of this movement over there as the men are. Female free thinkers and bloggers are a large part of the sharers of information on the net from there. Main reason is because women there are oppressed as well. Domestic violence is not a strange or unheard of occurrence especially in rural areas. In fact, in those places it’s oddly normal and women try to support each other emotionally in those instances but nothing gets done. Main reason is because, again, there is no way for them to get help and they’re told that it’s normal.

Child abuse is bad there too. It’s only been about four years or so since hitting children in schools was outlawed (and that was only because someone SUED the school system and won). But the physical abuse was the least of it. Children were, and probably still are, verbally abused by their teachers in school.

Of course, in regard to the men and the teachers, not all of them are like that like that but the majority are. The more you leave the cities, the more true it becomes.

This will never be a religious revolution. To those that say it will, I suggest that you read up on the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and read up on ElBaradei who has taken charge of all parties of the revolution. Another thing, this revolution comprises of four major parties who have united from day one against the government: the christians, the muslims, the agnostics/atheists, and the Muslim Brotherhood (a minority in the uprising until recently).

ElBaradei is a liberal and if they win this then I am hoping that civil rights will follow. Someone suggested that they write a bill of rights. I am all for that idea.

EDIT:Here are some more links to blogs from protesters and reporters in Egypt:

http://inanities.org/
http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/
http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/

This Facebook page is founded by the guy, Wae’l Ghounaeim who worked as a representative of Google in Egypt, that basically set all this in motion. He did not like that a blogger got framed and killed by police when he uncovered them splitting confiscated drugs amongst themselves. He made the Facebook page, which I learned about roughly during the time that roughly two people were killed themselves in protest in Tunisia which was..mid to late December last year. The page was only in Arabic then but this one is an English one which was made once the protests went full-swing.

http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk

Let me clear up some misconceptions about this movement:

1) Rubber bullets were not used on the protesters. They were being shot at with live ammo. Videos from Associated Press and those posted from people in Egypt on youtube can attest to that. Matter of fact, the first video that was leaked of an unarmed man being shot in the head is what caused the government to shut down net access in the country.

2) There were not pro-Mubarak protesters that were being violent and causing mayhem. Those people are payed by the government to do that and some are actually plain clothed police officers.

3) People did not go into raiding, raping and killing frenzy once the protests and net blackout started. Guards left their posts at several prisons which in turn freed prisoners into the streets. In Upper Egypt, the Bedouin tribes (they live in the desert of Egypt and normally don’t mingle with Egyptian society) invaded some prisons and freed their imprisoned brothers. The police and paid thugs did their fare share of that carnage as well.

4) This is not a religious revolution. It was not started by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Christians were in on it too and there is video evidence of them fighting the police as well. The average Muslim and Christian have been banding together since the bombing of the Church in Alexandria (never was confirmed who did it but investigations say it was Al Qaeda’s handiwork..surprise surprise) some months ago. That solidarity has continued and grown during the course of the protests. There has also been a notable presence of the free thinkers, agnostics and atheists in the evens of the past couple weeks. Indeed, a good deal of the blogging online from Egypt is done by that minority. The Muslim Brotherhood has not shown face until recently and one of the main reasons for that is simply because they had no hand in this. Also, because they are enemies of start according to Mubarak’s regime and they have been routinely jailed over the years with largely no basis for imprisonment (as per usual). The Muslim Brotherhood has also made it known that they will not interfere in the political proceedings on the country once Mubarak is out.