11/11: Busy day in Sharm El-Sheikh's COP27

Worldwide 11/11 is officially associated with the famous Chinese Singles Day or Double 11, the unofficial holiday and shopping festival that celebrates singles and targets them.

Originally a bunch of Egyptian websites, shops and restaurants were planning to jump into the commercialization wagon (you can’t blame them in a time of economic crisis) but now 11/11 has become another thing.

It will be the day that the first US president visits Egypt since 2009 despite it will be a short visit. US President Joe Biden is heading to Sharm El-Sheikh to participate in the 27th session of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change aka COP27 before embarking on a tour in Asia.

Biden in COP26 "Reuters"

It will be a busy day in Sharm El-Sheikh because, on the same day, Saudi Arabia is having its own eco-summit in Sharm El-Sheikh (Do not ask me why they are holding it in Egypt) and of course, there are many questions about whether Biden will meet MBS.

Also, the biggest elephant in the room about whether Biden will raise the matter of human rights in Egypt in particular Alaa Abdel Fattah's issue with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Biden will be the latest foreign/Western leader to raise the matter with the Egyptian President.

There has been an ongoing true meltdown full of misinformation and incitement about Alaa Abdel Fattah and his family in the mainstream and social media after Sanaa Seif’s Press conferences at the blue zone of the COP27 on Tuesday. “The blue zone is the zone that follows the United Nations and its jurisdiction."

It is not the first time; we have seen this since the days of Mubarak but this time it comes at a critical time involving his life.

There is no doubt that Alaa’s shadow or rather his spring ghost as he called himself once in a poetic verse on Twitter a couple of years ago overshadowed the COP27 in its first week along with the discussions of the loss and damage and climate finance. 

The three matters are still in limbo and the activists are still battling for them. They have not been defeated yet.

FYI, I am waiting to hear Biden’s position on loss and damage. I do not have high hopes for anything in that visit by the way in any file considering the US stances recently and historically. 

Now that’s 11/11 in Sharm El-Sheikh but in the rest country, we got warnings from the Egyptian Meteorological Authority that we may have thunderstorms and heavy rains.

At the same, we got a group of Egyptian activists leaning toward Islamists calling for mass protests across the country to topple the regime!! The call for 11/11 protests has been building up primarily through social media as well as Pro-MB TV channels.

TV hosts like Moatez Matar and YouTubers like Abdullah El-Sherif are not only calling the people to join but actually, they are sharing wild plans on how the protests act in a dangerous way I may say especially if they are abroad.

It is 12:35 am 11/11 now. I am lazy in writing this post, and some dubious Twitter accounts began to share old videos of protests from ions ago as if they were currently taking place in Suez, the birthplace of the 25 January revolution in 2011.

On the other hand, mainstream media is also building up that campaign against those who incite instability in the country.

Yet most Egyptians do not expect anything interesting to happen in the first place like the previous calls in the past.

For me, 11/11 is the day when the first US president pays a visit to Egypt since 2019 to address the COP27 after a dramatic week in Sharm El-Sheikh as well as in the United States considering the midterm elections.

There are lots of files in that very short visit to Sharm El-Sheikh in a very critical time whether internationally or regionally or domestically to discuss for weeks.