Is the Egyptian Army/Military still a Sacred Cow?

Non Violence is stil illegal in Egypt.
What can one do from far away except spread the word?


Cairo/London, 3 April 2011

PRESS RELEASE:
EGYPT: Trial against detained pacifist blogger and conscientious
objector Maikel Nabil Sanad adjourned to Monday 4 April

The trial against Egyptian pacifist blogger and conscientious objector Maikel Nabil Sanad on charges of "insulting the military" and "obstructing public security" has again been ajourned, this time to tomorrow, Monday, 4 April 2011, War Resisters' International's observer, conscientious objection campaigner Andreas Speck reports from Cairo.

Maikel Nabil Sanad was arrested by military police in the night of 28 March (see co-alert, 29 March 2011, and has been kept detained since. He is being tried in a fast-track trial in a military court, although he is a civilian. "According to international human rights standards, civilians should not be tried in a military court", says WRI's conscientious objection campaigner Andreas Speck. "Especially on charges of 'insulting the military', there is serious doubt that a military court can be impartial. In fact, the whole way this trial is being conducted is a clear violation of article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the right to a fair trial. Maikel Nabil Sanad has no time to prepare an effective legal defence with his lawyers, with only a few days between arrest and sentencing, which we expect to happen tomorrow. In addition, interested members of the public - such as myself, and his friends and supporters - have not been allowed to attend the trial, thus there is a clear breach of the principle of trial in public," he adds.

"Besides these shortcomings in relation to procedure, the charges themselves do not stick. Maikel Nabil Sanad only exposed the truth when he published his blog post on the role of the Egyptian military during and after the revolution. But this is probably what the military does not like, and why they are having a go at him. He showed that the military does everything but defending the revolution - it is defending the status quo. But then, you probably insult someone more by telling the truth than by spreading lies", he continues.

"However, his blog posts are protected by the right to freedom of opinion and expression. And the UN Human Rights Committee is very clear that this freedom also has to include the freedom to criticise the authorities and the military - whether they like it or not."

"War Resisters' International calls on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release Maikel Nabil Sanad and all those other activists arrested during and after the revolution. And we call on everyone to make their protest heard with letters to Egyptian embassies wherever they live", he adds.

Ends

Contact:
Andreas Speck, War Resisters' International (in Cairo)
Mobile: +44 (0)79-7368 3936

Javier Garate, War Resisters' International (in London)
Mobile: +44 (0)78-5303 8160

War Resisters' International office
Tel +44 (0)20-7278 4040
Email: info@wri-irg.org

Addresses for protest letters

Director of Military Judiciary
Major-General Ahmed Abd Allah
Military Judicial Department
Cairo, Egypt
Fax: +202 2 402 4468 / +202 2 411 3452 (ask for fax)

Military General Attorney
Major-General Medhat Radwan
Military Judicial Department
Cairo, Egypt
+202 2 412 0980 (ask for fax)

Minister of Defence
His Excellency Muhammad Tantawi
Ministry of Defence
Cairo, Egypt
mmc@afmic.gov.eg ; mod@afmic.gov.eg
A protest email can be sent at http://wri-irg.org/node/12474.

Egyptian Embassy in Britain
26 South Street, London W1K 1DW
Tel.: 020 7499 3304,
Fax: 020 7491 1542,
E-Mail Address: eg.emb_london@mfa.gov.eg
A list with contact details for Egyptian embassies is available at
http://www.mfa.gov.eg/English/Embassies/Pages/Listing.aspx

--
War Resisters' International
5 Caledonian Road - London N1 9DX - Britain
tel +44-20-7278 4040 - fax +44-20-7278 0444
Skype warresisters
email info@wri-irg.org http://wri-irg.org
Use email encryption! More information at http://wri-irg.org/node/11496

Cheating the Cheaters

A Frank Conversation With a Self-Acclaimed Casino Cheater.



1.

I've just come across this blog which Blogger thinks worthy to be noted...

Apparently one can be proud of diverse actions and choices, even of spending 25 yrs in the business of Casino Cheating.

2.

I'm musing, entirely unamused:

Don't you feel that by cheating you're actually replacing the Big Cheaters (The Casino Owners), not the System?



You might have made lots of money, but haven't you actually lost 25 (twenty five) best years of your life in this spiritual prison you're describing?



I'm interested in the human perspective. Telling the truthfull story of your life, feelings and urges could make a contribution to this lamentable world and population.

4.

Once I saw a men pulling something like one hundred dollars to pay for a bunch of lottery tickets.

I asked him with a smile (he looked so poor and worn out):

"Is there something left for your kids' food?"

He took the money and went away.

The lady running the booth admonished me:

"It's not nice what you've done. He'll go to another booth and I've lost a customer!"

In answer to your questions posted on my site:

Richard:

1.

While I'm not sure what it is you're asking here in relation to the Big Casinos and the System, I most certainly didn't replace the casinos. I put a little bit of hurt on them and was able to do so because of their greed and aggressive pursuit of sucker's money.

2.

I didn't lose 25 years in any spiritual prison. I LIVED my life. I travelled across the world, made a nice living, experienced a roller coaster ride filled with all of the adventures that life has to offer, and did so with a great deal of comraderie ith trusted teammates and close friends.

3.

I haven't read your books, so (unlike you) I won't attempt to offer assess them.

You should read my book maybe it'll inspire some adventures of your own.

The human perspective depends on experience. I lived my life fully (and continue to do so). I own all of its amazing experiences. Instead of being what I suspect as being at least a bit overly introspective, and feeling the world and its population is lamentable, you might be better off going out and having some fun. It may change your perspective to a more realistic and positive one.



Finally, my book is published by a major New York Publisher (St. Martin's Press). No need for a ghost.



Richard



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~





Indeed one needs to read a book in order to assess it (by which you probably mean, evaluate). While I've been indeed talking of Values, in regard to your book I was referring to the genre itself.



Literature is by its nature introspective, offering an in-depth perspective on life. How-To books do not reach that far. It's like the difference between a straw chair in your kitchen, and, let's say, Van Gogh's. One stays with you for as long as it is usable, the other survives Time itself.



You have written in the genre of "kitchen chair", which is usable in its way.

The issue is far reaching and deserves a Van Gogh.



True, he was introspective and suffering and probably most of the time very lonely and tormented. I do not recommend those aspects...



I feel there is a need to understand those deep layers of human spirit.

Dostoevsky was trying to reach into such deep wells. A ghost writer, a professional literary writer in your country might bring some inner truths out to light and then, behold, the "kitchen chair" will attain a totally different level.



While musing on this issue it dawned upon me that in my country, in the world at large, we are all, in a philosophical sense, Lottery Cheaters, as we try each in our petty corner to cheat the Sky, the Wheel dealers. It is pathetic and lamentable yet not as much as the people who populate the Casinoes are.



Some of us even take upon themselves the role of Robin Hood. If I understand correctly it was not your way.



In most countries those institutions "donate" monies to not-for-profit organizations. This is money taken mostly from the poor and deluded.



I know quite well that Casinos exists despite what I might call "the Cheaters of the Cheaters". What I meant was that you replaced, or joined, the System by using those monies.



As for adventures and camaraderie - we found them at the Mafia and criminal gangs as well, so they can stand on their own feet only while bestowed with qualitative content.



Hence my introspective question remains:

What is the Meaning of one's singular unique life?

Brilliantly Simple!

http://www.daily-news.ro/ Terente





These days I've been wandering from site to site, trying to understand the Rumanian reality as illustrated throughout the election's events.



From time to time I would land back home, to see how those were reported in our media.



How?

Mostly in the form of a quote from a foreign news agency, which in it's turn gets its milk from the present comusocialist government, now gravely blamed for illegal procedures.



Could it be that this is the way news are channeled to our own plates?



Feed us, feed us your lazy lies. All we want is Peace.

Faluja Landscapes

Is there a Future for Literature?

Reading comments on Madonna's literary enterprise has helped me see that there are so many people who share my concerns. The problem is that writers are isolated, and not exactly in the mindset of conglomerates, which makes it easy for the last to act by “Divide and Rule.”



What we can do as individuals is still a lot, and can make a difference. As teachers and professors we can teach how to discern, maybe create a new form of Comparative Literature, that will compare real books to the nonbooks polluting our culture.



As reviewers we can create this kind of review, in which a new book of value is presented along with a nonbook from among the “best sellers.” Compare a “how-to” book to passages in literature which deal with human dilemmas in lasting and forceful ways.



Those among us who are successful literary writers can pressure the houses that publish them to devote a percentage of their budget to literary works chosen for their literary value alone, and to invest in their publication the same resources invested in the selling of a commercial book.



We can also demand from the newspapers that, along with and on the same page as, their list of the weekly “best sellers,” they publish a list of “best books.” Even if many newspapers belong to the same owner-publisher, they cannot exist without their journalists’ co-operation.



We can patronize independent bookstores and consider the slight difference in price as our individual contribution to the sustenance of culture. Being creative by nature, we can devise innumerable ways to have our concerns voiced and heard, create change. And since writing is our common language, we should strive to make it the real global language, by opening up to the rich diversity of the international spectrum. This applies especially to the insularity of the U.S.A.



As for the nature of change we’re witnessing – the second law of thermodynamics applies only to Time, not to what we do in time. Of course the past cannot be changed, but our actions as a society or as individuals can be changed at present and in the future. I am encouraged by the model of the Green Movement. It has built awareness and brought about a reversal of actions: threatened with the possibility that people won’t invest in or patronize companies that do harm to our environment, conglomerates as well as small businesses go out of their way to manifest that they are acting ecologically. Maybe we should enlist the Green Movement’s support. After all, pollution is pollution, be it intellectual or physical.



I was also thinking that, left to their own devices, big businesses do not find it in their interest to support independent thinking. An intelligent and culturally well-informed reader is not the type of consumer or laborer easy to manipulate. Therefore, I think it is in the interest of our society and democracy, not only in that of the writer, to reverse the tide.

Sadly Funny

Just found in a books chainstore a heavily discounted beautiful book - red hardcover, excellent paper, jacket - a pleasure to hold and behold: Mark Twain's "A Tramp Abroad".



I'm still at the beginning yet already reading Twain's humorous description of the German students' spartan corps code and their insane dueling, one stops smiling. A root, unstroken.

>"...It was considered that a person could strike harder in the duel, and with a more earnest interest, if he had never been in a condition of comradeship with his antagonist, therefore comradeship between the corps was not permitted..."



"...I had seen the heads and faces of ten youths gashed in every direction by the keen two-edged blades, and yet had not seen a victim wince, nor heard a moan, or detected any fleeting expression which confessed the sharp pain the hurts were inflicting..."

Money?

I'm really touched to "hear" on the net people discussing issues which actually cross the line between the virtual and life itself.



Reaching out from Israel, the blog is a laboratory where behind glass windows, it is possible to experiment building a beta reality, where communication can be sane, relaxed, as close as possible to the unattainable ideal.



I couldn't stand the temptation and had the adsense at some of the English sub-blogs - yet I set it at the bottom of the blog, like in this old Jewish story of the legendary people of Khellem - they made a brand new beautiful floor for the synagogue

but then got worried that it will be smeared with mud, so they covered it with straw...



This seems to me to be the "dillema": how to keep the beautiful blog in sight and yet not have it smeared with mud...

Singing Flowers For You

It's always easy to manipulate the weak and the muted: "We know better what's best for the flowers, for you."

It annoys me to no end.



"...Flowers are inserted into an acrylic tube containing a magnetic coil and an oscillating component. Applying an alternating electrical current causes the tube, and the flowers, to vibrate at high speed, producing audible sound..."



Thanks to Marijano for alerting us...

Blogger is dressing up the naked...

Can you be an once-a-year-for-one month writer?



Last year, while confronted with the phenomenon, I did respond on the spot.Now, reading Graham and Blogger's exalted recommendation of this Herculean attempt to "write a novel" in one month, I've just posted the following comment at Graham's blog.



Hi Graham,



I'm a writer of literary fiction and non-fiction. Following a book for young children, my second book was written during 3 years, my third in 15 yrs, my fourth in 11 yrs, my fifth in 9 yrs and I've been working on the sixth for the last three yrs and am still far away from its conclusion.



Writing literature is not an one month marathon but a life long one. It takes dedication, the feeling that you cannot sleep if you do not write, that writing is like breathing to you, skin of your skin.



Writing literature is not a typing contest. You write awake and in your dreams, and daily while seemingly involved in mundane activities. Writing is a long process of revelations for which you are just an organ through which they pass on to the insightful reader.



I heard about this McDonald fast-writing concept last year and had immediately expressed my non-admiration.



Above all I abhor the disrespectful use of the word Novel. Disrespectful to Literary Art, to literary writers, to Intelligence and Creativity.



When the information comes from Blogger,and under the "Knowledge" title - so strong a recommendation - it should have had at least room enough for another opinion, comments, discussions. It is not a technical issue. We are talking here Ethics, and this is a totally different realm.





29.10.04

The consumerism ethos has brought upon us only misfortune: wars, colonizational imperialism, terror. I fear the colonization of Humanity's last refuge.

The Herd Instinct vs, Jesus

1.

While in theory we are all for the glorification of the individum, in practice the Western Contemporary Culture still labels people in context of groups, mostly the Bad (Them) and the Good (Us).



2.

Stigmatic Memory.

or, as I have been asked not long ago in Portugal, out of the blue:

"Is it true you've killed Jesus?"



3.

The Use and Abuse of those manipulations, or, as I'm still finding in the Right's Romanian media (and expressed also in more than one of the comments in previous, related, posts here:

"The Jews were punished by God to wander homeless and suffer forever because they've killed Jesus."



Is there any comfort in the knowledge that no person on earth I know of, in person or from hearsay, is free of those?



4.

The crucification was one of the tools by which the Roman Empire ruled. Cruelty always comes hand in hand with Power.



The subordinates will always react in a myriad of ways, from total opposition to abuse.



Yet no one will say, for instance, that it was not Stalin who murdered the Russian Jewish writers one by one - but the anonymous or not that anonymous devout citizens who sent letters of slander against them, out of envy or plain anti-semitism, in full knowledge of the consequences.



5.

Only when, if ever, Christianity will acknowledge with due respect the right of each human being to be different, not one of the herd alone, only then anti-semitism will be erased from our world.



Better still if all sects - secular or of religions - will reach such an elevated state.



Almost all it takes is for each of us to remember that one is meant to be the Messiah of one's unique life and existence, and undertake this sweet responsibility.



It's heartbreaking how far we are from this, how far from it we have allowed and are allowing religions and empires to drag us along.

The "Average" Voter, A Yom Kippur Confession.

Some time ago there was this daily poll at an Israeli online paper.

You hit to see the polls.

I got tempted.

Entirely by mistake, a second click occurred.

To my great surprise, this registered as well.



It took me about ten minutes and some hundreds of clicks to turn the tables on that poll...

So polls - I'm not too impressed with them.



Now You Big Mouth points us to an article on this very issue: Are Voters Idiots?



Excuse me: "Are the Average Voters idiots?"



A good idea for another poll: Who is the average voter: You/ your Neighbor/ your father-in-law?



It is true that the individual voter is bound to be an intelligent voter. You do not need academic or any education to judge a candidate for his or her actions, not words and promises.



Yet as a group, when in a group - individuality, reason, wisdom are stripped away and you get pushed into the stream of stupidity.



What is left is to try and stay away from the crowd mentality, avoid it.



(another poll: Is this possible/impossible?)

Confronting the Front

Robert Spencer at FrontPage relates to rape committed by Muslim terrorists and by Muslim criminal gangs in France and concludes with great conviction:



"...This indicates there are two things the massacre in Beslan have in common with the ongoing massacres in Darfur: both, no less than the 9/11 attacks, are examples of Islamic jihad terrorism, and both are characterized by rape."



If only life was that simple: The US soldiers who raped Vietnamese women not such a long time ago.

The Japanese, the German... Back and forth in history we can go and see the same pattern repeated, with or without the Qu'ran or any other holy tradition.



In war and in peace, nothing is more sacred than the universal tradition which sanctifies and enables criminal violence against women.

Noble People

I know close to nothing about Iran today or since the Islamist Revolution.



I know some about suffering complete, immediate, fully conscious fear of annihiliation.



Burried deep in my heart and essence, rearing it's trembling head daily throughout this modern brutal existence.



Like a soothing balm to the soul come noble people from the forty corners of the world and say, Let's stick together.



Happy new year, Universe.

No, no: MultiVerse.

Strike the root, but make sure you see it...

Upon reading another article on the problem The Other poses here and there:



In my whole life, I've never met a person of Armenian origin and still no one has managed to persuade me that "Armenians are" (actually all the list that some easy riders proclaim about the Jewish people).



As Franz Werfel testifies in his important Forty Days of Musa Dagh, it was, and unfortunately to this day it is still possible to manipulate and brain wash groups of people, to instill hatred toward The Other, the stranger, the minority.



It is my conviction that evil will continue to flourish as long as the Individual person won't accept responsibility to think clean of stereotypes, with a pure heart. Not an easy feat, indeed, but the alternative has proved itself as much more worse, throughout generations.



The same goes to ideas. It was not the idea of communism that failed, but the same trait of hunger for unlimited power which it was supposed to help strike at the root.



The idea of Zionism, as a liberation movement, is not to be blamed nor the idea of national liberation for the Palestinians, but again the same trait of hunger for unlimited power which turned upon all of us here in the Middle East crashing as a boomerang.



It is our responsibility as individuals , to limit power. We won't succeed in doing so as long as we accept manipulations and stereotypes.

Ben Gurion, Nixon, Bush, Sharon...

The more I read about USA, the more I feel really baffled - is it about USA or about my country?



When it comes to news on Bush - I'm completely in the dark. Are they misspelling Sharon's name?



Countries are easier to understand. Physically, Israel is small - USA is huge.

With Bush and Sharon it goes the other way.

No wonder I'm confused daily.



Then, the media. In Israel it used to be that every political party had its own newspaper.

Those were replaced later by independent, commercial media.

The journalist was entitled "the author".

No more.



Now we are back to square one, with a small difference. If at the olden times "the author" was the mouthpiece of the political party, directly - now the journalist is enjoying the services of the PR or Press Assistant.



To-night, reading Antonia Zerbisias, as re-published at the excellent truthout, I can only respond with the Hebrew slang, "I've already been in this movie"...

Probably the most troubling admission comes from Karen DeYoung, a former assistant managing editor who reported on the prewar palavering: "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," she says. "If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said."



But since when is a presidential pronouncement The Word Of God? What happened to inquiry, investigation and, what's it called again, journalism?

Emigrant or Immigrant - it's Vladosgrant.

Vlados has an English site, on Blogger, worth reading.

Don't miss it!

Have you ever been a prisoner?

My first impulse was to say, most indignatly, Of Course Not!



Really?

How many times in your life have you felt as if robbed of freedom?

Wasn't childhood a prison in more than one sense - the historical as well as the personal? And to this day - aren't you daily fighting inside your little cell, encircled by bigotry, stereotypes, wars, work, abuses, fears...



Since last week, Palestinian prisoners in Israel are on a hunger strike. Why, and what are their demands you may read at length in the Israeli media.

Collective Wisdom

This site is not one voice, as a proper blog should be.

A polyphonic compilation, a basket full of wisdom.

Some of them you might have heard already, like this one:

Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)



First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.

A good place to come when life seems too much for you.

What really happens in Iraq?

1.

We know so little - we grab each piece of direct information.



CBFTW was an anonymous soldier in Iraq. Still alive, hopefully, yet no more anonymus.

You might have read his "My War" blog.



I've read him for the first time only today, following a link for An Interview with an Iraqi Man.



He says he was not armed when he interviewed him.

And the Iraqi man? Full of praises for the US army and goverment he is indeed.



2.



Once I had a Palestinian plumber working some in my house here in Tel Aviv.

He promised to come on a certain date.

When I finally got hold of him and asked why had he promised since he knew he won't be able to make it, he said:

"I didn't want to insult you."



Reading that interview I assumed the Iraqi volunteer did not want to insult our soldier, so he told him what he knew was expected of him to say. Then CBFTW did not feel like insulting his readers, so he told us what he seemed to perceive as most pleasing to the ear of the uninitiated.



Not an easy position for both of them, not a happy one for all of us involved in this tragic existence nowadays.



3.

Reading further into the blog, I was perplexed, since the guy was all along writing from his guts, with much courage, intelligence, sensitivity and a great natural talent.



4.

Then I came upon on the previous post:



In this episode CBFTW is called to order by his officer. They won't censor him, but he should show his post to his commander, prior to publication.



5.

Why now? The guy was blogging for two months already.

A few posts down, the answer stares you in the face:

A most graphic, detailed report from the scene of war led entirely by USA troops such as our blogger- in stark contradiction to the CNN reporting of "Clashes between police and insurgents".



6.

CBFTW, why do I decipher in the last three letters of your name the acronym for "F. The War"?



Or is it "Cool Brother Forsake True War"?

Incredible Cheap Beer

I know close to nothing about Iran today or since the Islamist Revolution.



I know some about suffering complete, immediate, fully conscious fear of annihiliation.



Burried deep in my heart and essence, rearing it's trembling head daily throughout this modern brutal existence.



Like a soothing balm to the soul come noble people from the forty corners of the world and say, Let's stick together.



Happy new year, Universe.

No, no: MultiVerse.