Revolutions are like electricity. An electric shock of the most unexpected kind. The victims think at first it must be a powerful wasp sting. Then they realise the entire house in which they live has been electrocuted. They react with howls of pain, promises to move home or to rewire the entire place, to protect…
When US Defence Secretary Mark Esper was asked this week to confirm President Donald Trump’s assertion that Islamic State group (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died “whimpering and crying” as he ran into a tunnel, he said he couldn’t: “I don’t have those details.” As someone who has never seen action in his life, and watched this…
When the West’s leading media organizations attempt to convince audiences they know nothing about where Mohammed Aly – a Spanish-based Egyptian protest leader – came from, the first thing one can be sure of is they are being lied to. Protests have begun to spread again in Egypt after nearly a decade of frustration in Washington…
There’s a déjà vu feeling to this year’s wave of protests across the Arab world. It’s not that this year saw the toppling of the leaders of Algeria and Sudan as a result of popular revolts, a harking back to the 2011 protests that overthrew the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. It’s that…
Since September 20, Egypt’s government has been facing a new challenge that came in the form of massive anti-government demonstrations demanding the resignation of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi both in the capital, and in such cities as Alexandria, Suez, El Mansour, and Helwan. So far, there’s been two major waves of protests, but new ones seem…
If Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had chosen an alternative career, it should surely have been the stage. His was a sympathetic voice from military intelligence assuring both liberals and Islamists in Tahrir Square in January 2011 that the army was on their side. For the late President Mohamed Morsi, Sisi played the religiously observant, younger general. Sisi, the…
