Egypt

NOVANEWS       co-alert War Resisters' International, London EGYPT: Pacifist blogger and conscientious objector Maikel Nabil Sanad sentenced to three years in prison Maikel Nabil SanadWar Resisters' International has learnt this morning that pacifist blogger and conscientious objector Maikel Nabil Sanad has been sentenced to three years' imprisonment yesterday on charges of "insulting the military". Yesterday, in front of the military court in Nasr City in Cairo, his family and friends were told that the trial had been adjourned (see co-alert, 10 April 2011), while in fact it was happening, and Maikel Nabil Sanad was being sentenced to prison, without his family or lawyers present. This is an outrageous violation of the right to fair trial according to article 14 of th...

NOVANEWS by crescentandcross   Witnesses Report Arrest of Soldiers Who Tried to Join Protest by Jason Ditz, Faced with rallies across Cairo which some estimated were upwards of a hundred thousand demonstrators demanding reforms, the Egyptian military junta attacked Tahrir Square Saturday morning to disperse protesters. The troops march in force on Saturday morning, firing mostly into the air and sporadically into the crowds. In the end the protesters fled the square, and at least two were reported killed. 15 others were wounded. Witnesses also report that the military had arrested a number of soldiers and other military officers who had attempted to take part in the protests. The demonstrators tried to protect some of the officers from arrest, sparking additional clashes...

NOVANEWS   Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC   “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction And to every revolution there is often plotted a counter revolution…” “Day by day, things began to go back to the way it used to be as if the uprising never happened in the first place. Mubarak’s inner circle of aids and strong officials in the government and the national Democratic Party (NDP) were still on the loose with millions of dollars worth of liquid money and property stolen from the country and decades of political crimes unaccounted for. Mubarak himself has not been put on trial yet despite the billions he has stolen and the atrocities he has committed.” DR. Ashraf Ezzat / Veterans today Secular Egyptian youths sparked the uprising The world still...

NOVANEWS According to the same WSJ survey, 99% of Egyptians called Zio-Nazi Netanyahu to become president of Egypt. Oh, yes. This is a credible survey that smacks of accuracy. Poll: 60% of Egyptians support peace with IsraHell Survey shows most Egyptians would support peace accord if Palestinian state is also established. More Egyptians favor secular Wafd party over Muslim Brotherhood. Only 2% approve of ElBaradei Yitzhak Benhorin WASHINGTON - Some 60% of Egyptians support the peace treaty with Israel – as long as an independent Palestinian state is established alongside the Jewish state, a study conducted by the United Nations-affiliated International Peace Institute shows. The pollsters, who interviewed 615 Egyptian citizens over the phone, f...

NOVANEWS   Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE UPDATE: Egyptian pacifist Maikel Nabil Sanad charged with insulting the military / trial adjourned to Sunday, 3 April Update to press releases from 30 March 2011[1] and co-alert from 29 March 2011 [2]   The trial against Egyptian pacifist Maikel Nabil Sanad, who was arrested on 28 March 2011, and who appeared in front of the military court in Nasr City in Cairo today on charges of "insulting the military by publishing false news about it" and "obstructing public security", has been adjourned to Sunday, 3 April 2011. During the trial, Maikel Nabil Sanad, who appeared strong, denied the charges. War Resisters' International, the international network of pacifist and antimilitarist organ...

NOVANEWS EGYPT: Conscientious objector Maikel Nabil Sanad arrested / in military court today   Maikel Nabil SanadWar Resisters' International has been informed that Egypt conscientious objector Maikel Nabil Sanadhas been arrested this morning, and will appear in military court today. He is being threatened with a sentence of up to five years imprisonment, but it is not known what he is being charged with. Maikel Nabil Sanad has previously been arrested in November 2010 (see co-alert, 14 November 2010) and February 2011 (see co-alert, 4 February 2011), but so far he has always been released after one to two days. It is to be feared that this time he will be sentenced to a long prison sentence - possibly up to five years. War Resisters' International also fears for his safety in mi...

NOVANEWS   Why did the ancient Israelites lie about ancient Egypt?   By Dr. Ashraf Ezzat James Henry Breasted   We prefer to define ourselves in terms of where we are going, not where we come from.  Man is so much smarter now than he was before that anything from the past is outdated and irrelevant to us. Our ignorance of the past is not due to a lack of information, but of indifference. We do not believe that history matters. The concept of history plays a fundamental role in human thought. It raises the possibility of “learning from history” And it suggests the possibility of better understanding ourselves in the present, by understanding the forces, choices, changes and circumstances that brought us to our current situation.  It is therefore unsurprising that historian...

NOVANEWS   Decades of political repression of dissent in Egypt has created an iceberg out of  the Muslim Brotherhood group -MB- with seven-eighths of its actual size under the surface. Dr. Ashraf Ezzat Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser   It was really the best of times, it was absolutely the worst of times, back in the sixties. President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s time in Egypt when he reigned like some legendary knight as if he was sultan Saladin, the epitome of Arabic chivalry, who united the Arabs and fought back the western medieval crusaders. Whenever Nasser addressed the Egyptians and their Arab brethren the Arabs all over were all ears. They believed in him and he believed in his dream of a united and one Arab nation from the Persian Gulf in the east to the Atlantic Ocea...

NOVANEWS Dear All --- I know that each of you has been trying to keep track of what has been happening to women active in the Egyptian uprising.  Here's what I've just heard from my friend Nadje Al-Ali. Nadje, as many of you know,  is an Iraqi British feminist scholar, head of the Gender Studies Centre at SOAS, University or London, and author of some of the best books on Iraqi women's politics (U of Calif Press; Zed Press). She did her phd in Cairo and her first book was about Egyptian women's politics. Nadje has stayed in contact with a circle of leftist and feminist Eygyptian friends. According to Nadje's Cairo friends, there has been a severe backlash in recent days, with women often the targets, anti-democracy men attacking and sexually harrassing women, some arrested and abused.In ...

NOVANEWS   Post Mubarak change in Egypt? Egyptian airline no longer features the Zionist state among its flight destinations. Egypt Air – the official Egyptian airline – has deleted Israel from its travel destinations. The airline’s website no longer features the Zionist state among its flight options. According to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, “Israeli travellers intending to fly to Ben-Gurion Airport in Lod did not find ‘Israel’ among the Egyptian airline’s destinations while the capitals Amman, Beirut and Damascus appeared on the map; this is despite Egypt’s proximity to Israel.” The newspaper pointed out that Egypt Air was the first major airline to remove Israel from its map of travel destinations and that both Turkish Airlines and Royal Jordanian Airways continue to mai...