Egyptian Revolution

Bread Freedom Social Justice

Egyptian Revolution Commerative Coin

The Central Bank of Egypt has released a commemorative coin to mark the 2011 25th January Egyptian Revolution.

Egyptian Revolution - Thawra Masr - Thawra Yanayar - ثوره يناير

 

 

Egyptian Stock Market

link to Egyptian Stock Market (English)

Great Day out and HELP EGYPTS GARDEN CENTRES!

If you want a great day out spend the day at Orman Gardens, near Giza Zoo, Cairo and help Egypts struggling Gareden Centres post revolution.

From now until the middle of May, 9am till 8pm every day there is a huge Flower, Tree, and Landscaping Exhibition there in the Gardens.

You can spend the day wandering around looking and buying all the beautiful plants and trees and succulents and cactii, fruit trees, beautiful flowers and topiary, see honey being made by the bees in glass hives, buy goldfish, terrapin, budgies, koi carp, fish tanks, wander through landscaping exhibits, buy pottery, vases, pots, ceramics, Nubian and bdeouin handicrafts.

They exhibition is large with neatly spaced out rows to wander down. Everyone is very helpful and there are experts on hand to advise on planting etc. All kinds of tools, lawnmowers, fertilizers, composts, insecticides on sale. Herbs, flowers and trees of all descriptions and many unusual ones.

Wheelbarrow boys to cart your purchases for you to the car. Car parking is 5le and I'd advise you all to park inside trhe Gardens so it is easier to get your things back easily to the car although there is parking outside the gardens too. Right now the Lotus and Papyrus ponds have millions of tadpoles ( baby frogs ) swimming around them. Nice for the children to see.
Beautiful topiary on sale, tools, kiosks, and the sellers are very helpful without hassling you. You can wander around and look and buy in perfect peace.

Once you have loaded your car with plants and trees and stuff you can spend the afternoon sitting in the gardens under the tree shade and have a picnic.

It's a great way to help out the Egyptian Garden Centres and growers post revolution.
If you have a garden or balcony or just want to buy some nice house plants its the place to go. Prices are very good. All items were either normal what you would pay or below in the average garden centres.

Entrance is free, you just pay car parking at 5le.

Go along for the day and support our Egyptian Garden Centres and have a great day out till Mid May.

The Orman Gardens are right next to Giza Zoo, close to Cairo University in Giza. Car parking you use the main gate.

Have a great day out and help our Egyptian flower and tree growers.

I Wish You Egypt (By Omar Barghouti)

An open letter to people of conscience in the West.

I wish you Egypt!

I wish you empowerment to resist; to fight for social and economic justice; to win your real freedom and equal rights.

I wish you the will and skill to break out of your carefully concealed prison walls. See, in our part of the world, prison walls and thick inviolable doors are all too overt, obvious, over-bearing, choking; this is why we remain restive, rebellious, agitated, and always in preparation for our day of freedom, of light, when we gather a critical mass of people power enough to cross all the hitherto categorical red lines.

We can then smash the thick, cold ugly, rusty chains that have incarcerated our minds and bodies for all our lives like the overpowering stench of a rotting corpse in our claustrophobic prison cell.

Your prison cells, however, are quite different. The walls are well hidden lest they evoke your will to resist. There is no door to your prison cell -- you may roam about "freely," never recognizing the much larger prison you are still confined to.

I wish you Egypt so you can decolonize your minds, for only then can you envision real liberty, real justice, real equality, and real dignity.

I wish you Egypt so you can tear apart the sheet with the multiple-choice question, "what do you want?", for all the answers you are given are dead wrong. Your only choice there seems to be between evil and a lesser one.

I wish you Egypt so you can, like the Tunisians, the Egyptians, the Libyans, the Bahrainis, the Yemenis, and certainly the Palestinians, shout "No! We do not want to select the least wrong answer. We want another choice altogether that is not on your damned list." Given the choice between slavery and death, we unequivocally opt for freedom and dignified life -- no slavery, and no death.

I wish you Egypt so you can collectively, democratically, and responsibly re-build your societies; to reset the rules so as to serve the people, not savage capital and its banking arm; to end racism and all sorts of discrimination; to look after and be in harmony with the environment; to cut wars and war crimes, not jobs, benefits and public services; to invest in education and healthcare, not in fossil fuel and weapons research; to overthrow the repressive, tyrannical rule of multinationals; and to get the hell out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and everywhere else where under the guise of "spreading democracy" your self-righteous crusades have spread social and cultural disintegration, abject poverty and utter hopelessness.

I wish you Egypt so you can rekindle the spirit of the South African anti-apartheid struggle by holding Israel accountable to international law and universal principles of human rights, by adopting boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), called for by an overwhelming majority in Palestinian civil society. There is no more effective, non-violent way to end Israel's occupation, racial discrimination and decades-old denial of the UN-sanctioned right of refugees to return.

I wish you Egypt so you can fulfill your countries' legal and moral obligations to help rebuild the ravished, de-developed economies and societies of your former -- or current -- colonies, so that their young men can find their own homelands viable, livable and lovable again, instead of risking death -- or worse -- on the high seas to reach your mirage-washed shores, giving up loved ones and a place they once called home. You see, they're "here" because you were there... and we all know what you did there!

Our oppression and yours are deeply interrelated and intertwined -- it is never a zero-sum game! Our joint struggle for universal rights and freedoms is not merely a self gratifying slogan that we raise; rather, it is a fight for true emancipation and self determination, an idea whose time has vociferously arrived.

After Egypt, it is our time. It is time for Palestinian freedom and justice. It is time for all the people of this world, particularly the most exploited and downtrodden, to reassert our common humanity and reclaim control over our common destiny.
I wish you Egypt!

Omar Barghouti is a Palestinian human rights activist, former resident of Egypt, and author of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS): The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Haymarket: 2011)

Great new website about Revolution.

Principles of Tahrir Squared

TAHRIR SQUARED: MULTIPLYING THE TAHRIR EFFECT
1. Tahrir Squared (T2) is an initiative set up in the aftermath of the January 25th uprising in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt.
2. T2’s aim is to engender, report on and otherwise support initiatives that were and are set up in the spirit of the etiquette that was displayed in Tahrir Square during the uprising. In particular, the concern for the people of Egypt, without differentiation between the Muslims or the Christians, rich or poor, old or young, disabled or not, man or woman. That etiquette and concern are what engender within T2 the conviction that this is a truly unique moment in our time.
3. T2 is the expression of the will of young people who were in Cairo during the time of the uprising and who hope for the best for Egypt, the Arab region, the wider Muslim world and humanity, one and all.
4. The main activity of T2 is to:
a) provide information on civil society initiatives and political activities that are taking place in Egypt as a consequence of the new atmosphere of freedom;
b) provide information on civil society initiatives and political activities that are taking place in other parts of the Arab world that are likewise being touched by the same atmosphere, including Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain and elsewhere;
c) to provide a forum for discussions on a) & b);
d) to provide information on the situation in other predominantly Muslim countries in the same way, whether in the Middle Eastern region or not;
e) to provide information on the situation in other non-Muslim countries around the world;
f) to provide such information by way of articles printed elsewhere or blog posts placed on the site;
g) to provide such information through multi-media.
h) To enable initiatives and civil society actions through the work of T2and not just facilitating initiatives that are already out there.
5. Examples of ‘civil society initiatives’ might be as simple as clean-up crews in city centres, to being as complex as organising ‘town hall meetings’ around the Arab world, or encouraging environmental actions in Asia – if they are somehow inspired by Tahrir Square. Examples of ‘political activities’ might be discussions on the constitution and how to ensure political institutions are maintained or reformed in a way that allows for maximum public benefit through civil society activity. We view the political activities as necessary, but insufficient activities for T2 to support – while we view the civil society activities, while more important long-term, to be sometimes difficult to achieve without political activity.
6. T2 is not a place to begin any activity outside of the law. T2 is a place to help civil society develop within the law.
7. T2 recognises that in certain exceptions, the law has failed, and people have no choice but to take up arms to defend themselves – this has obviously been the case in Libya as a result of the actions of the regime. It never came to this in Egypt, however, which is why Tahrir Square never became the site of an armed revolt against the state. Rather, the state collapsed as a result of the army refusing to break the cardinal law of Egypt and humanity – not to take innocent human life, even when ordered.
8. T2 will be a place where the breakdown, when and if it happens, can be discussed and explored in a free and open environment.
9. In short: T2 will create an archive on these issues and activities, will spread and disseminate information on these issues and activities, will provide a space for all that energy that exploded from Tahrir Square to be utilised, and facilitate that, and will create new ideas directly to do things in the real world.
10. The first manifestation of T2 is, in the first instance, this website, which is located at www.tahrirsquared.com, which will be the manifestation of T2 activity as mentioned previously. All of this must affect people on the ground in the real world. There can be a virtual community, but its useless if it does not encourage, stimulate and carry out action in real life.

Visit this fantastic new site here:

Tahrir Squared
Tahrir Squared Facebook page

Sout al Horreya

Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam Song for the world.

My People

by Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) on Sunday, 13 February 2011

Dear Friends,
If you wish to take part in adding your voice to support people around the world still dreaming of being unshackled from harsh authoritarian regimes, you will soon have a chance to do so.

Yusuf has written a song which is inspired by the world shaking call to freedom and the removal of oppression from the peoples of Tunisia and Egypt, the song called My People will soon be available and you'll be able to send a recording of your voice to be used on the chorus - God Willing.

If you would like to join in, this is how:

1. Listen to the chorus, "MY PEOPLE", here
2. Choose one of the 3 part harmony samples, and record yourself singing the words "MY PEOPLE",
3. Then send your recording as an MP3/ Wav or Aiff (with no background noise please) to:

mypeople@yusufislam.ae

To Download Yusuf's MP3 Sample to your computer right click and select 'Download Linked File'

We will try to use as many submissions as possible. The deadline for receiving your contribution will be Tuesday 15th February, 3pm GMT.

The track once completed will be made available as a FREE MP3 Download.

SPREAD THE WORD TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

link

For the Egyptian Martyrs

Egyptian Revolution 11th February 2011

Ya Ya Masr!

Egyptian Revolution 11th February 2011

The future is in their hands

Friday 11 February 2011

by George Galloway

There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.
The peoples of the Arab world, and therefore the rest of us, are now living through those weeks - described in words used by the Russian revolutionary Lenin a century ago.
Revolution is back on the agenda, on the front page of the New York Times even, at just the time when globalised capitalism is mired in its deepest economic crisis for generations and the seemingly almighty power of US imperialism is being demonstrated to be anything but.
The overthrow of the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia last month, triggering the heroic and ongoing uprising of the people of Egypt, the most populous and strategically significant Arab country, was a real revolution. So is Egypt's.
There was a foolish and shortlived attempt to dub the revolutionary uprising in Egypt the "Lotus revolution," but no amount of cheap advertising copy can devalue the profound and welcome changes that millions of Egyptians are fighting for.
The fate of that movement lies in the balance this weekend, as people across the globe take to the streets today in response to a call from Cairo for international solidarity.
But the courage of the protesters in Tahrir Square, in Alexandria, in the great port city of Suez, and in every town and city in Egypt, has already settled some questions definitively.
How long have we been told in the West that the poor benighted people of the Arab Muslim worlds are incapable of taking their futures into their own hands?
All the lies deployed to justify the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan took this great lie as their premise - that the West must bomb and blast the people of those countries into "democracy" because they are incapable of changing their societies themselves.
The fall of Ben Ali and the rise of the Egyptian masses has put paid to that essentially racist stereotype. The women in Egypt - young and old, with hijabs or not, university educated and from the slums - are showing that they do not need Laura Bush or Cheri Blair giving a faux-feminist gloss to F16s to liberate them. The sisters are doing it for themselves alongside men drawn from across the base of Egyptian society.
And the US State Department, British Foreign Office and French Quai d'Orsay don't like it one bit. It's not only their close personal connections with the torturing regimes of Ben Ali and Mubarak which now stand fully exposed. We know a little about Tony Blair, who still found Mubarak a force for good as the death toll from his clinging onto power climbed above 300.
More is at stake than these politicians' personal connections with Mubarak. The cornerstone of decades of US and Western policy of holding down the mass of the people in the region in the interests of oil, corporate control of trade and investment and Israel is shattering. Every Arab despot ruling the region almost without exception from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf knows it. Which is why the wind of change that is intoxicating their people is bringing a chill to each of those regimes.
And that's why the State Department and its counterparts, caught flat-footed over Christmas with the revolution against Ben Ali, have been bending might and mane to contain the revolution in Egypt. How could it be otherwise? Half the population of Egypt is on less than $2 a day, when the price of a kilo of tomatoes has increased fivefold in 12 months to exactly that daily wage.
The inspiring resurgence of the movement on the streets of Egypt has created further crisis for the regime and for its Western backers, who had to become more forthright in pushing Mubarak to go. They would prefer to have kept him. They would prefer to keep the regime without Mubarak, in the person of Suleiman. They are risking this revolution deepening and radicalising, so that when the regime's key figures do fall the great fountain of humanity in Egypt's streets will not be satisfied but will demand much more by way of political and social justice.
At the time of writing the heroes of Egypt were looking to do just that, with strikes spreading among government workers and calls for marches on government buildings on Friday.
For progressives in the West this is a historic development, and everyone must play their part to help ensure that progress wins in Egypt, not bloody repression in the name of the party of order.
We must ruthlessly expose the hypocrisy of our governments. When they express support for the Egyptian revolution it is as a rope supports a hanging man. They want the army to be the bedrock of any future regime. They do not mean the army of 1973, which bravely fought against Israel. They do not mean the army of soldiers fraternising with their brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers in the streets. They mean the army of the Egyptian high command, the generals, who have been bought and paid for by Washington and who will do its bidding.
When Cameron, Clinton, Hague or Obama talk of democracy in Egypt and the region what they mean, to paraphrase that great Algerian St Augustine, is god grant them democracy, but not yet.
Hillary Clinton spelt it out. Democracy, she said, is not only about process, it is about outcomes. Quite right. But the outcome they fear is that any remotely democratic government in Egypt or Jordan would not produce the outcome of supine adherence to Western interests and the state of Israel.
In Egypt, according to Pew researchers, 82 per cent of people have a negative view of the US, and just 17 per cent positive. It's no mystery why. And so we hear desperate warnings from neocons, liberal imperialists and even some on the social democratic left against the chaos that will result from "snap elections." Egyptians, they say, must wait. But as Martin Luther King reminded us half a century ago writing from a jailhouse in Alabama, wait nearly always means never.
The final bogeyman is the creature David Cameron chose to summon up in his bierkeller rant in Munich last week - fear of Islam, hatred of Muslims, Islamophobia.
We cannot have democracy because the wrong guys may win - in this case the Muslim Brotherhood. Leave aside that the Brotherhood is just one opposition force among many and that it aspires to the kind of government represented by the AK party in Turkey, moderate and efficient by any measure.
The argument in fact has little to do with the Muslim Brotherhood or any other Islamically inspired political organisation. It is about refusing to accept a change that would threaten Western interests, that might inspire a unified Arab world to use its immense natural resources for the good of all the people there and the good of humanity as a whole.
It is, in short, an argument with the simple purpose of demobilising forces pushing for revolutionary change and democracy in Egypt and beyond, and strengthening the fingernail extractors, electrocutors and assassins who Western hegemony relies on.
But I do not see it working, even though it will intensify the racist atmosphere against the 18 million Muslims and immigrants living in Europe, who may well feel that the direct fight for a better future in the Maghreb and other regions they hail from is a fairly good model for struggling for a better life for all within Europe itself.
The sands of time have run out for the pharaoh. He may yet unleash rivers of blood in a bid to hold on. But this wind of change that blew sweetly first through Tunis and now Cairo will not stop there.
With it comes the possibility of undoing the legacy left from the colonial era of Sykes and Picot, of Edwardian gentlemen carving out new states and spheres of influence on the back of a napkin.
And the biggest outstanding injustice of all is Palestine. If the Egyptian regime falls to this great wave, the gates of Rafah will fall too and with them the siege on Gaza. Already the breeze is blowing in the West Bank against those who have enriched themselves while selling every Palestinian aspiration in the sham negotiations with Israel.
What is unfolding now in Egypt is not simply an national revolution, or even just an Arab revolution - it is a moment that holds out the prospect of the most profound change in the way the world is ordered, an historic event in the global struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.
Victory to the Egyptian revolution!