Originally posted by NoSCAFNoMil http://youtu.be/uGw9436xDBc
Brought to my attention via Twitter by @lovethepeople
~ Sofia Smith
Monday, November 28, 2011
For a boy on the streets of Cairo, revolution is his only hope
By Jeffrey Fleishman,
Originally posted by the Los Angeles Times at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-egypt-homeless-boy-20111128,0,400158.story
Protesters demonstrate in Tahrir Square in Cairo. (Mohamed Omar / European Pressphoto Agency / November 27, 2011)
Reporting from Cairo—
Ibrahim Shaban said he was 15, but he looked much younger in his pajama pants and sweat shirt with the worn-away rhinestones, dirt caked on his bare feet, a knife scar on his face. He strolled through the crowds in Tahrir Square the other day, watching banners unfurl, listening to speeches. He sometimes sounded like a miniature rebel, distilling the nation's rage in his narrow body."My father died a month ago, so I've been living in the square," he said. "He had heart problems. He sold cups and glasses in the street. I used to help him. He's gone now. My mother died too. A few years ago. I don't know what of. She just died."
He looked over at the makeshift hospital at the mosque. A man overcome by tear gas lay unconscious. Another was bleeding. Police were firing birdshot in the streets. Mobs surged toward them. More wounded would be coming. A cleric bent to pray.
Ibrahim waved to an ambulance driver.
"I want to be part of this protest," he said. "I want my own rights one day."
His bed is cold dirt beneath the stars. There are many like him, orphans who have found a home in rebellion. You almost don't notice them. They slip like small, ragged spirits through the square. They lived poor before the revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak in February; they live poor now. They are the legacy of his failure, and of death, broken homes and slums filled with families whose burdens are too big to bear.
"Me and boys like me work together. We clean cars. Sometimes, someone will give us a blanket. I sleep here in the square, but other boys sleep other places," said Ibrahim, one of Egypt's estimated 3 million street children.
The crowd protesting against military rule grew in the square. Ash piles and stones littered the ground. Young men with cotton in their noses ran toward security forces and then quickly fled clouds of tear gas, which swirled around a bearded man wearing a tunic and a gas mask and carrying a walking stick, as if a gnomish figure from a "Star Wars" movie. Black-clad riot police took shape when the smoke cleared. They reloaded and waited at the corner.
"I used to work six days a week with my father," said Ibrahim, who quit school when he was 7. "He bought me a bicycle. We saved money once for a long time, and one day he surprised me when he came home with a TV and a satellite dish. My mom was alive back then. "
He looked into the sun.
Ibrahim didn't know the kid who walked up and stood next to him. The two exchanged glances. Islam Ramadan is homeless too. He's 12. He held a bullet casing and had turned an Egyptian flag into a bandanna; his zip-up jacket was a few sizes too big. He listened to wasps buzzing over a mud puddle.
"I've been living here since the revolution started against Mubarak," Islam said. "My parents divorced and I had been staying with my grandmother. She died. My stepmother beat me and my real mom didn't want me. Her new husband's a cop."
He edged into the rhetoric of an activist, simmering anger, wisps of conspiracy. He has listened well over the months to those carrying banners and shouting slogans: "It's all a lie. Mubarak is still in power. He never left. Everything is still the same. The country is no better. Someone should help poor people like us. I could be a handyman or a mechanic."
He once had a place in the square to hear fairy tales and do math. Ibrahim nodded toward an open space near the subway entrance.
"A charity put a tent up over there during the revolution. They tried to gather homeless kids to feed and educate. The police came and tore it down."
Ibrahim shook his head.
Flags rose. Revolutionaries marched again toward the barricades. Other boys, not homeless ones, but ones with parents, ones who just got out of school, ran farther behind the flags, carrying backpacks, their faces hidden behind surgical masks.
A man with a beard was making promises. Millions of promises blow through the square.
Ibrahim has heard them all.
He said he wants to be a doctor, but then settled for something closer to touch.
"I'd like a home and a very small shop," he said. "I want to have enough to get married and have kids and give them something better than this."
Ibrahim looked down at his pants. He knew they were too small, riding way above his ankles. They were the only pair he had. He lost his shoes a while ago. He sat like a cat, relaxed but ready to run. He touched the scar on his left cheek and remembered when he stayed out late one night and returned home to his angry father, who wanted to scare him but waved the knife too close.
"He didn't mean to do it," he said.
He goes back to his old neighborhood sometimes. He plays with his friends and sleeps in the street, and eventually drifts back to the square. It was loud in Tahrir. Some were calling it a second revolution. Others were busy working on a truce between protesters and police. Footsteps and voices echoed like thunder. Ibrahim wouldn't sleep that night. He rose toward his family of strangers.
"Everyone should have the right to call for his rights," he said. "Even me."
~ Sofia Smith
Sunday, November 27, 2011
End Israeli Apartheid NOW! Code Rouge featuring Amel Mathlouthi " Horizon " Génération Palestine
In memory of those killed on the Freedom Flotilla in 2010...they will never be forgotten. And we will never every give up! End Israeli Apartheid NOW!
Originally posted by coderouge19 at http://youtu.be/dSB9ly7te6E
~ Sofia Smith
Originally posted by coderouge19 at http://youtu.be/dSB9ly7te6E
~ Sofia Smith
The Importance of Political Cartoons!
#Cartoon - SCAF's "free elections" in #Egypt - #Jan25 #Tahrir #NOSCAF by @CarlosLatuff
Originally published by Latuff at http://twitpic.com/7kmpuu
Originally published by Latuff at http://twitpic.com/7kmpuu
Which brings me to the power of political cartoons! They are immensely important in society. In a glimpse the cartoonist, any cartoonist, has to concisely capture the current sentiment/issue at hand. To give the general public a birds eye view...sometimes more brutally than other times (which is appropriate)...into what's going on. Some of us see these images and appreciate the candor and ability to capture what's happening. And as activists we use these images heavily to get our points across to the general public! Others literally wake up by viewing these images. Well this one should have been an eye opener to many!
Some may react like I did. Others, not so involved in Middle East or any politics really, will...think...relate...pass it on. And hopefully wake up a bit!
Obviously political cartoons by no means represents all of the political awareness raising process. But it is a very important part. A picture can and does, more often than not, represent a thousand words, feelings, sentiments...
Finally, I'm including a video clip on the making of a cartoon on behalf of the Egyptian revolution by Latuff. Have a look. This is how it's done right!
Originally posted by Latuff at http://youtu.be/Hiax_vsAaCE
Special thanks go to Carlos Latuff for making his cartoons and videos so widely available to us all!
~ Sofia Smith
In an Investigation by the EIPR: Bullets of the Ministry of Interior Were Aimed to Leave Demonstrators Permanently Disabled
Originally posted by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights at http://eipr.org/en/pressrelease/2011/11/26/1294
Saturday 26 November 2011
60 Eye Injuries in Kasr el-Aini Hospital Alone... High Rates of Injury to the Face and Upper Body... The Wounded Confirm That Their Eyes Were Directly Targeted
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights' (EIPR) preliminary investigations into the attacks on demonstrators in Tahrir confirmed that security forces deliberately fired birdshot pellets and rubber bullets in the direction of demonstrators' bodies. This use of force was intended to injure demonstrators rather than to disperse them, which led to several of them losing the use of their eyes.
The EIPR underlined the need to charge elements of the Interior Ministry with assault causing permanent disability, in the ongoing public prosecutor's investigations into attacks on demonstrators in Mohamed Mahmoud Street and Tahrir Square. By law, this charge carries a sentence of ten years rigorous imprisonment if the assault was premeditated.
"The high rate of eye injuries leaves no doubt as to a pattern of intentionally aiming birdshot pellets and rubber bullets at the eyes of demonstrators", said Magda Boutros, Criminal Justice Reform Director at EIPR. "We will not let this atrocious crime go unpunished."
Kasr el-Aini hospital alone received 60 cases of eye injuries between the 19th November and the morning of the 27th November. According to the records of those injured and held in Kasr el-Aini hospital, eye injuries varied between burst corneas, burst eye sockets and foreign bodies in different parts of the eye.
A volunteer eye doctor in the field hospital nearest to Mohamed Mahmoud Street reported that between the morning and afternoon of the 21st November, he treated almost 25 people, of which 4 had sustained injuries in the eye area from birdshot pellets. The doctor stated to EIPR researchers that the majority of injuries were to the upper half of the body and especially to the face, and that injuries were from both birdshot pellets and rubber bullets.
Many witnesses from amongst the injured in Tahrir square confirmed the same pattern. Hady Q, one of the injured demonstrators, said that Central Security Forces (CSF) aimed their guns at a straight horizontal angle towards the bodies of demonstrators. Hady was injured during the clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street on the 19th November by shrapnel above his right eye and fell to the ground; when he got back up he was wounded again by two pieces of shrapnel in his left and right legs.
Rights activist and blogger Malek Mostafa also described how he was wounded in his right eye by birdshot pellets on the 19th November: "I was standing on the junction of the square with Mohamed Mahmoud Street, and CSF soldiers and officers were standing far down Mohamed Mahmoud firing tear gas, birdshot pellets and rubber bullets. There were two vehicles with two people on top of them, shooting. I was helping an old man sleeping on the ground to try and stand up, when a shot hit my eye."
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights' (EIPR) preliminary investigations into the attacks on demonstrators in Tahrir confirmed that security forces deliberately fired birdshot pellets and rubber bullets in the direction of demonstrators' bodies. This use of force was intended to injure demonstrators rather than to disperse them, which led to several of them losing the use of their eyes.
The EIPR underlined the need to charge elements of the Interior Ministry with assault causing permanent disability, in the ongoing public prosecutor's investigations into attacks on demonstrators in Mohamed Mahmoud Street and Tahrir Square. By law, this charge carries a sentence of ten years rigorous imprisonment if the assault was premeditated.
"The high rate of eye injuries leaves no doubt as to a pattern of intentionally aiming birdshot pellets and rubber bullets at the eyes of demonstrators", said Magda Boutros, Criminal Justice Reform Director at EIPR. "We will not let this atrocious crime go unpunished."
Kasr el-Aini hospital alone received 60 cases of eye injuries between the 19th November and the morning of the 27th November. According to the records of those injured and held in Kasr el-Aini hospital, eye injuries varied between burst corneas, burst eye sockets and foreign bodies in different parts of the eye.
A volunteer eye doctor in the field hospital nearest to Mohamed Mahmoud Street reported that between the morning and afternoon of the 21st November, he treated almost 25 people, of which 4 had sustained injuries in the eye area from birdshot pellets. The doctor stated to EIPR researchers that the majority of injuries were to the upper half of the body and especially to the face, and that injuries were from both birdshot pellets and rubber bullets.
Many witnesses from amongst the injured in Tahrir square confirmed the same pattern. Hady Q, one of the injured demonstrators, said that Central Security Forces (CSF) aimed their guns at a straight horizontal angle towards the bodies of demonstrators. Hady was injured during the clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street on the 19th November by shrapnel above his right eye and fell to the ground; when he got back up he was wounded again by two pieces of shrapnel in his left and right legs.
Rights activist and blogger Malek Mostafa also described how he was wounded in his right eye by birdshot pellets on the 19th November: "I was standing on the junction of the square with Mohamed Mahmoud Street, and CSF soldiers and officers were standing far down Mohamed Mahmoud firing tear gas, birdshot pellets and rubber bullets. There were two vehicles with two people on top of them, shooting. I was helping an old man sleeping on the ground to try and stand up, when a shot hit my eye."
The EIPR got hold of Malek Mostafa's medical report, which stated that the injury was caused by a medium-sized blunt solid body (a plastic or rubber bullet). This led to a complete draining of the visceral body and the chloroid, and laceration of different parts of the eye. The doctor's opinion was that the patient had lost the ability to see light, which could lead to a loss of use of the eye.
One demonstrator confirmed that this deliberate targeting of the eyes was acknowledged by the officers themselves. Eyewitness Ramy el-Khouli reported that a CSF officer, whilst chasing demonstrators towards the Omar Makram mosque on the 19th November, verbally threatened demonstrators with targeting of the eyes, saying: 'If you want to lose your eye, come over here'.
A large number of video recordings made by demonstrators and eyewitnesses proved that the targeting of the eyes was intentional. Perhaps the most notorious clip is one circulating on the internet which clearly shows an officer firing on demonstrators in Mohamed Mahmoud Street. A soldier then congratulates him on hitting a demonstrator's eye, saying: 'Nice one, you hit the guy's eye.'
EIPR added that the pattern of deliberately targeting the eyes and face of demonstrators is similar to the approach taken by security forces during the January revolution, which also resulted in serious injuries to the face and eyes.
Adel Ramadan, EIPR's legal officer, said: "The Ministry of Interior has now proved to us, nine months after the fall of the former president, that its brutality in confronting demonstrators has not changed. Rather, it has increased to the point that the Ministry will now intentionally burst demonstrators' eyes."
The EIPR confirmed that its investigations into this crime will continue until they arrive at a complete list of the names of security personnel who were present during the attacks and who were involved in firing all kinds of ammunition on demonstrators, in preparation for bringing them to justice on charges of killing almost 40 demonstrators and injuring more than 3000 others. The EIPR also underlined that accountability must extend to the leaders of the Ministry of Interior responsible for giving the orders to kill and injure – most notably General Sami Sidhom, Minister's Assistant for the Security Sector, and General Emad el-Din el-Wakil, Minister's Assistant for Central Security Forces.
One demonstrator confirmed that this deliberate targeting of the eyes was acknowledged by the officers themselves. Eyewitness Ramy el-Khouli reported that a CSF officer, whilst chasing demonstrators towards the Omar Makram mosque on the 19th November, verbally threatened demonstrators with targeting of the eyes, saying: 'If you want to lose your eye, come over here'.
A large number of video recordings made by demonstrators and eyewitnesses proved that the targeting of the eyes was intentional. Perhaps the most notorious clip is one circulating on the internet which clearly shows an officer firing on demonstrators in Mohamed Mahmoud Street. A soldier then congratulates him on hitting a demonstrator's eye, saying: 'Nice one, you hit the guy's eye.'
EIPR added that the pattern of deliberately targeting the eyes and face of demonstrators is similar to the approach taken by security forces during the January revolution, which also resulted in serious injuries to the face and eyes.
Adel Ramadan, EIPR's legal officer, said: "The Ministry of Interior has now proved to us, nine months after the fall of the former president, that its brutality in confronting demonstrators has not changed. Rather, it has increased to the point that the Ministry will now intentionally burst demonstrators' eyes."
The EIPR confirmed that its investigations into this crime will continue until they arrive at a complete list of the names of security personnel who were present during the attacks and who were involved in firing all kinds of ammunition on demonstrators, in preparation for bringing them to justice on charges of killing almost 40 demonstrators and injuring more than 3000 others. The EIPR also underlined that accountability must extend to the leaders of the Ministry of Interior responsible for giving the orders to kill and injure – most notably General Sami Sidhom, Minister's Assistant for the Security Sector, and General Emad el-Din el-Wakil, Minister's Assistant for Central Security Forces.
~ Sofia Smith
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Inside Story - New target: Egypt's military leadership
Many thanks go to @ghazalairshad for bringing this to my attention!
Originally posted by AlJazeeraEnglish at http://youtu.be/dG-s5777KKc
~ Sofia Smith
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