The photos and the Cartoon of the day

This photo or rather series of photos were the most shared photos in my twitter timeline , they had to be the photos of the day.

From Anadoulu News agency

The president on a wheel chair

The photos of Algerian president Abdel Aziz Bouteflika heading to cast his vote in Polling station in the presidential elections on a  wheel chair along with his brother and his little nephew.

The Bouteflika "AFP"

#SaveFustat : Save the Excavation Works

Here are some photos for the excavation works in the old archaeological site of El Fustat City , Egypt’s first Capital under the Islamic role. These excavation works were made by a French archaeological mission which stopped its work because of the current security situation. (Photos taken in 2012 by Conservation architect Omneya Abdel Barr"

In case you do not know  that archaeological city is going to be transferred in to a garden by Cairo governorate and the ministry of antiquities is ok with that.
As you can see the remains of the Fustat city were built by mud and thus turning this area in to a garden

#EndSH : What do school girls Think about Sexual Harassment ?

Dignity with borders made another video clip about sexual harassment and young Egyptian students in schools. The first video ,a shocking one was about the views of young boys in the schools about sexual harassment. I posted it here earlier this month.

School girls’ views about sexual harassments

By the way new amendments were added to the current sexual harassment law and soon enough the interim president will issue the law with the new amendments.
The new amendments include harsher penalties for sexual harassers as well for mob sexual harassments. This is the first time mob sexual harassments are included.
I do not think these amendments would have seen the lights if it were not for the campaigns started online to fight this disgusting epidemic.

#SaveFustat : So It is turning in to a public Garden after all !!

And it seems that the Fustat archaeological site is going to be turned in to some sort of a public garden after all and the ministry of antiquities was bluffing us.
This photo was taken earlier Monday , as you can see this is the site of Fustat. A new wall was built around the site with a big sign stating that “this land is owned by Cairo governorate”  !! The site is also secured by a CSF vehicle as it seems.

Fustat site now !!

Again Fustat was the first capital built by Muslims in Egypt. The site was being excavated , now all those excavation works are going to be destroyed.
It is not that out present is screwed and our future looks uncertain , our history is being destroyed over and over !! I feel that we are leaving nothing to future generations except failure. Anyhow at least some of us are fighting this.
I know one thing fore sure. If this had happened during Morsi , the media would have gone mad for real. I can not get over how people were claiming to be mad that the Islamic museum was damaged during the bombing of Cairo security directorate and yet do not care or move a muscle for what is happening not only to Fustat but old Islamic Cairo from aggression.

And it is getting Scary Now , It is a routine

The death and murder news in Egypt have become a routine , it is not longer a shock. It is a normal thing now.
Today a student was killed in Cairo university. He was shot by live ammunition. I think the students from Cairo university that have been killed in the past 8 months are more than 12 now.
Two journalists covering the protests were shot also by live ammunition according to their medical records. The journalists are from Youm 7 Newspaper and Sada El Balad channel. Both are from the Pro-regime media by the way.

Photographer Khaled Hussein from Youm 7

Eye witnesses from students and reporters say that they were shot by police forces that went earlier Monday to disperse the Pro-Morsi Students Against Coup movement’s protest. According to eye witnesses from reporters and students the police opened its fire against the students when the protest was inside the campus not even outside it !!
Here is a video showing that

And here is the original Tripartite Committee Report about #Ethiopian Dam

From a year ago if you remember the tripartite technical committee to study the impact of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam "GERD" on Egypt , Sudan and Ethiopia issued an important report about it. The report made Ethiopia angry because it claimed that the upstream country did give the committee all the documents and blueprints they needed about the dam and its security measures.

There was one hell of circus in Cairo about it from exactly one year ago.

Did you remember this now !? 

Well in case you do not know the dispute over the dam and Egypt’s share of the Nile’s water is still there. I am afraid the talks with Ethiopia are not doing well with the insistence of the Ethiopians to complete the constructing of the dam. Of course our government is trying to have talks with the Ethiopians from time to time despite they seem to fail every time.

I do not need to say that Sudan sold out Egypt.

Anyhow why I am blogging about this , well because last March Anti-Dam Environmental NGO International Rivers Organization published a statement calling Ethiopia to halt the construction of the dam till all the studies about its impact on the downstream countries as well its safety measurements. The IRO also called international investors to stop funding this project.

The Anti-Dam movement which has criticized Ethiopia’s dam boom since 2008 is known from its environmental stances. OF course now our media found for the first time a good US-based NGO !!

Of course the GERD’s National Panel of experts had to fire back to International Rivers organization in a big statement last Thursday accusing the Anti-Dam California based NGO of being paid by Egypt and that it was fighting Ethiopia’s progress against poverty. To be honest the language used in the Ethiopian's statement reminded me very much with the Ultra-nationalist conspiracy language used in our media.

What is interesting is not the statement of the Pro-Environmental US based NGO , what is interesting is that the International Rivers organization published online the complete report of the tripartite technical committee to study the impacts of the GERD on Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia in Egypt.

Yup the NGO published the full report in English now. Of course they did not say how they did get it. You read it below after the break.

Happy Palm Sunday 2014

Palm dolls outside a church in Cairo "Reuters"

Happy Palm Sunday to all the Christians around the globe celebrating it especially in Egypt.

#Marathon For Freedom in #Cairo Against protest Law

And today was the first event organized by Revolutionary political movements in Egypt against the protest law.  In case you do not know , we got very stupid protest law that resulted in detention of thousands and imprisonment of hundreds unfairly. True Pro-Jan25 Revolutionary political movements want to abolish this law.

Alaa Abdel Fatah running wearing a poster of Abdullah Shamy

A symbolic marathon in Cairo that ended at the journalists syndicate staircases.
The symbolic marathon where the protesters wore signs calling for the freedom of detainees started in Zamalek from Opera house and ended at the Journalists syndicate. The majority of protesters ran but there were also bicyclists too.

Kodak Agfa Presents : Ain El-Sokhna Spring 2014

So from two weeks ago I went in a shot vacation to Ain El-Sokhana. It was a nice gateway for couple of days away from the noise.

I took couple of photos there , I played around with my camera. Of course I realized after I returned back to Cairo that there was stupid smudge on the lens. I cleaned it and now it is perfect again thank God.
The weather is fantastic now in Ain El-Sokhna. It is nice quiet place.Of course you can barely see any foreign tourist there now. I hope the fall season the foreign tourists would return back.
Here is my favorite photo from that short vacation.