Alaa Al-Aswany was Yosri Fouda’s guest on air in “Last word” on “ON TV” last Friday and it was very important and worth to be watched. Siyad Badawy , the leader of Al Wafd party was supposedly going to appear on the show to speak about the elections and the decision of the party to boycott the parliament but he declined. Siyad Badawy claims that he is waiting for the general meeting of the party’s high committee next Monday before speaking to the media yet according to unofficial sources Badawy received a warning from the state security to speak on air. You can watch the episode below after the break.
Alaa Al-Aswany spoke about many issues , mainly political democracy related issues. He spoke about the elections , he spoke about the need of change and about the fact that Egyptians are not that passive citing examples like the participation in syndications’ elections and clubs’ elections. He spoke about Al Wafd party , in fact he mentioned the old Al Wafd party several times in his talk. Al-Aswany is from the team that believes Siyad Badawy bought Dostor daily and fired Ibrahim Eissa as a part of deal with a devilish regime. He also spoke about ElBaradei and said something that I agree with ; he said that despite the frequent travels of ElBaradei outside Egypt were annoying yet they proved that that was not a movement that depended on one man only , on the contrary we did not stop working and fighting the regime and corruption. By the way Dr. ElBaradei will return to Cairo tomorrow insh Allah.
Another thing that caught my attention is what Dr. Al-Aswany mentioned about revolutions and public demands , the revolutions never started with political demands in fact they start with economic demands that evolve in to political demands later; the thing which is actually in process or in making in Egypt. everybody fears that scenairo thanks to the increasing gap between rich and poor. He spoke this gap and about the two Egypts , Egypt of the rich and Egypt of the poor we all know about.
Al-Aswany who always ended his column in Al Shorouk with these famous words “Democracy is the solution” has left the newspaper and decided to publish his weekly column as a weekly post in his upcoming official website/blog. The best selling author had to leave the newspaper after the threats its publisher Ibrahim Al-Mallam received from the state security. I am waiting already for the launch of his official website to share it with you. This was not something expected on the contrary , already there were rumors that he would leave the newspaper because of his opinion during the infamous media crackdown from two months ago.
Yosri Fouda could not ignore the anti-Semitism charges following Al-Aswany in Europe and States. He simply refuses the free Israeli Hebrew translation of his international best selling work “ The Yacoubian building” without his permission. We found one day that some Israeli publishing house releasing a Hebrew version from “The Yacoubian building” and distributing it for free without any permission from the man who wrote it !! Put yourself as best selling international author like Al-Aswany , would you or would you not be angry and sue them internationally !!?
Due to his nationalistic views , Al-Aswany has been accused of anti-Semitism despite the fact it was his intellectual right he is protecting . Al-Aswany does not reject the idea that his books would be translated to Hebrew but not through an Israeli publishing house. Al-Aswany identifies himself from that second popular Egypt that boycotts Israel , not the official Egypt that sends firefighting planes in less than 24 to Israel.
By the way these stupid accusations reminds me when the book started to gain international fame after its translation to English and French and the Israeli media brought the anti-Semitism charges because the book was named after “Yacoubian” the Egyptian-Armenian spy who was working for the Egyptian intelligence against Israel !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Last month Al-Aswany was honored in a big celebration in the journalists syndication and he also had this war of words with the minister of culture Farouk Pasha Hosni. Needless to say Al-Aswany won that war.
During the show Al-Aswany revealed that he will release his next book next year.
Z, million thanks for the link, was hoping to find someone who posted it. Dr. El Baradie is back today inshallah and it seems like the battle lines have been drawn and soon we the normal ppl will have to live up to our words by action. Like Dr. EL Aswani, ana motafa2la = Im optimistic.
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