Mohamed ElGohary

‎I came across a title in the news about the marriage of Phyllis ‎‎Leon (84 years) and Del Martin (87 years), and for clarification, ‎‎Phyllis is a woman, and Del is a woman too. Recently, in ‎‎California, a law was issued allowing Gay Marriages. The ‎‎moment I saw this I just remembered the President of Columbia ‎‎University while he was directly attacking the Iranian President ‎‎because in Iran they do not respect the gay rights.‎

‎I will consider trying to be more “civilized”. What does the ‎‎President of Columbia think about polygamy? (In case of a male ‎‎marrying several females as in Islam) What happens in the West ‎‎is that polygamy is a crime from a legal (punishment with jail ‎‎and fines) and social point of views. ‎

‎It is just related to different cultures and different definitions ‎‎across different civilizations. In our old (Islamic or Arab) ‎‎history, polygamy was introduced and it wasn’t that offending to ‎‎the public. This social state continued for thousands of years ‎‎with nearly no change. And if went back in time to the other ‎‎side of the ocean, we will find that the Greek and Roman ‎‎civilizations didn’t despise homosexuality. In the contrary, they ‎‎considered the female as a disgusting creature; a creature who ‎‎bleeds, and suffer protrusions which negatively affects the ‎‎beauty of the human body. Females were just created for ‎‎preserving the mankind, and males must beware of them. Real ‎‎love is between a man and a man. It is the noble, pure love, for ‎‎there is no children are begotten and there is no required ‎‎commitment of any kind to force one of the partners to continue ‎‎living with the other. It is just love and love only. You can see ‎‎that in Plato’s book “The Republic”. But in the same time, it ‎‎was prohibited in the civilizations (The Greek and the Roman) ‎‎for the male to marry more than one female. The thing that ‎‎made the Romans call our (Egyptian) Queen Cleopatra by the ‎‎name: Egyptian Whore because she married Caesar while he ‎‎was already married.‎

‎I understand the differences between cultures and I do accept it. ‎‎But this glorification of homosexuality happening nowadays in ‎‎the West to the extent of adding being high emotional, artistic, ‎‎intelligence, and creativity to homosexuals is the normal ‎‎evolution to the Western heritage and civilization (civilization as ‎‎history). What I really don’t understand, why the West (and the ‎‎United States specifically) doesn’t understand that our ‎‎perspective towards homosexuality is just the same as their ‎‎perspective towards polygamy? And that their crimination of ‎‎polygamy and their refusal of legalization of the many affairs of ‎‎men (outside marriage) is just the case as our refusal to legalize ‎‎homosexuality though they are existing in our societies?‎

‎I find it trivial and playful to draw caricatures of Plato or show ‎‎him in a movie while he is putting a gum in his mouth while ‎‎wearing make-up and dancing playfully. But the Westerners, ‎‎though there is no comparison between our Prophet (Peace be ‎‎upon Him) the most Gracious in our hearts, culture and history ‎‎and Plato, made of fun of our Prophet for nothing but marrying ‎‎more than one woman.‎

‎The West considers us (the Arabs) idiots, and I want to clarify ‎‎that we see them as idiots as well. A famous saying among the ‎‎Arabs: Americans are idiots. But this comes back to our ‎‎definition of idiocy. They think that the idiot person is the one ‎‎who does not know how to read and write correctly, is not ‎‎brilliant in Physics and Math, etc. While we consider reading ‎‎and writing, computers, Physics and Math as skills with an ‎‎availability to be learnt easily. But in the other hand, in our ‎‎culture, We understand life and variations in abilities between ‎‎different human beings, their richness, differences, and ‎‎accepting this while searching for the common among them ‎‎without altering them. This is the real wisdom. We do not think ‎‎like Westerners think that who is not with us is against us.‎

Torture affects thousands of people in about 100 countries around the world.

All European Union countries oppose torture and have been fighting together for 15 years to put an end to it and to help victims resume a normal life. That’s why the European Union is financing projects across the world to make torture a thing of the past. These projects are being run by the European Commission within the framework of the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights.

26 June – International Day in Support of Torture Victims

Is the msn messenger worth connecting to?

Everyone must have the courage of the surgeon when he begin the first cut of the operation. Everything just follows naturally after the cut, while you might think a million times afraid of the first moment. Falling in million traps of uncertainty…

When you think of something, go for it, be it right or wrong, mistake or not, you will realize and have the experience, maybe you can give you valuable experience in a place like this…

What do politicians want? What value do they add to people in my country? Is it worth all this media coverage? Being it corrupted official one or the usually not so good independent?

Politicians claim that they word for people, so do Members of Parliament, popular talk shows, News Agencies, or even Bloggers. I'm not essentially a leftist, but I believe in the impossible meaning (at this moment) of Democracy; The Masses ruling the Masses. (This can happen within the hi-tech era, thought not our point now.)

Do people, the Mases, really believe in one or more of those? And if someone achieved a degree of credibility, does this mean that this someone is of a major importance of influence?

All these strikes, sit-ins and protests; the major ones were held solely by normal people, very normal people indeed. Media maybe had some influence by covering "some" of them, and usually in not so good a way. Activists/Bloggers did a great job (as persons versus corporate backed new media) in documenting and covering these incidents which is the major part of this activism plus calling for protests which usually ended up with the 30-some demonstrations held in downtown against at least 10 thousand of the armed Central Security Forces. with some exceptions (Major protests)

The major workers' (and others') protests were effective mainly (if not only) for the economic crisis (crimes) in all Egyptians suffer. While all the media catalysts (New Media and Bloggers) were just lucky enough to be in the right place in the right time and trying to do the right thing.

Politicians are trying to do their dirty jobs in numerous ways, either they were suposed in the good side or the their bad side. They either involve in bashing it in a very unethical way, or boasting the so-called heroic acts of their party or their precious personnel. The later are really worse esp if they have they keys to show business to market themselves. Man that reminds me of Bill Clinton's show business policy.

The economic crisis is increasing at a high pace. More people will move sooner or later. I'm already feeling a volcano building from years, slowly, waiting for a weak point to erupt. Growing exponentially in a dangerous way recently. Real politicians are not those who only write in newspapers and go show off in talk0shows. Real politicians emerge within people, those normal people who suffer everyday to get their bread (life as Egyptians call it)

People around the world who exist in countries supporting the Egyptian authoritarian government, your taxes directly finance the dirty\corrupted business between our governments and is directly used for supporting cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. In addition to state terrorism against normal people ion the international bright name of fighting terrorism. You have part of the ball to play with. You know you can do something.

This is how I see it. I was always the one who put the fuel. I tend to supply fuel in great quantities and for a very long time with no equivalent refund from the other side. I ended up needing more refund which was not possible for reasons either I don't know, or I don't want to know about. No equation can be stable in this situation and pressure increase to break the whole thing up. And it broke.
Though I still long for that beginning…

Day after day, love turns grey
Like the skin of a dying man
Night after night, we pretend it's all right
But I have grown older
and you have grown colder
and nothing is very much fun any more.
And I can feel
One of my turns coming on.
I feel
Cold as razor blade
Tight as a tourniquet
Dry as a funeral drum,

Media is an important factor of public opinion formation, being free or otherwise. Egypt was the victim of centralized or controlled media since the 1952 coup (I personally feel that media was fairly developing before this date). Any one can imagine how can controlled media be so destructive to the abilities and talents of any nation. Media, fundamentally, must be free.

Any country controlled by military men hate free media to their bones. I think even in thr western democracies, officialis in in the security field (military or police) hate media to some extent. Maybe because of the being-exposded feeling. In the last two decades Egypt was witnessing an increase in the freedom level in difference media forms, beginning with the satellite channels, then after them the independentnewspaper. I see that the most important terms in the media equation are: money and credibility (credibility here includes the mass influence).

I want to talk about about a very recent example of what I can call adolescnce or idiocy of supposedly free (independent) forms of media. The 6th of April strike. I really don't know if this is a trend of personification used differently by the normal people (as an easy way of dealing with things), or by the seucirity (to make the government heads happy by oppressing the the personified ones). In the end of the day, the press used all of its power to make the strike personifed in a girl who found herself in the middle of unexpected extraordinary circumstances with no real reason other than being accidently the founder of the controversial strike group without being the real person who suggested the whole thing. This press mass idiocy, next to the equivalent idiot policy for the State Security, was the main reason of detaining Israa Abdel Fattah plus all the fuss that happened, and all the "chaos" the press got in.

The credibility of media is measured by the personal scale within every person receiving the media material, but the media must run after the truth, not after high noise show business. Show business destoys the eopes of freedom in our oppressed countries.

Not blogging due to Studying + suffering a state of loss of technology. No mobile(camera) or stable computer.

This is what I'm feeling:

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

"Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say"

Home, home again. I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
Its good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

Pink Floyd – Time (and what exact time is the song talking about…) and then The Great Gig in the Sky…

Check here

Thursday there was a strike for the Biomedical Department students in Shorouk Academy, something I'm really proud of since I'm one of those students. Though we didn't have all our goals fulfilled, but it is a good step anyway esp there was a not-so-bad cooperation between the Deparment Head Prof Osama Hassan and we the students.

It all began with firing three of the assistants in the department. Officially the head didn't affirm this. But from sources inside the academy, the owner Dr. Mohamed Farid Khamis, ordered them to sign their resignation. There was graphic evidence that these three assistants gave private classes with opposition to the Academy general policies that all extra-curriculum activity must be under the direct supervision of the Academy authorities.

This decision started some opposition among us (personally not me, I didn't like those fired people), but anyway we decided to unite under several causes and do a general strike to force some kind of action.

Here some of the pics:

You can check more at http://www.flickr.com/ircpresident and will search for other students who will have any available material. Stay tuned.

Our demands can be summarized in the following:

1. Returning the assistants (due to the shortage in the academic staff, other than that I don't personally like their way of dealing with us)

2. One day off vacation since it is hard to only have Friday off since many students are not Cairo residents, these usually stay in Shorouk City during the academic week and spend the weekend with their families.

3. From point one, we needed improvement to the staff and improved practical training.

During 2.5 to three hours of the strike, two assistants trying to convince that we must follow order if we wanted to be heard (Seems like governmental influence on normal people is really strong). The strike was mainly by the 3rd year students, and after 2 hours from the beginning the senior (fourth year) students joined us as well. Still we didn't move until the head of the department called for a general meeting to discuss our previously mentioned demands.

Prof. Osama was really wise in dealing with this matter. He didn't mock at the move or at the students or anything. We elected two students to be our representatives, then we had an hour discussion. Though only the third was promised to be done later this year, the first two were denied for the same shortage of resources (human as assistants and other as places). With a promise for a temporary solution like bringing staff from other departments until a permanent solution can be applied.

I want to note that this move was really criticized by our colleagues before and during the strike, but I must confess that this is really a good move. Keep going my Egyptian people.

Stay tuned for updated material.