Geography Archives: Egypt

Like 2008, this year is witnessing waves of strikes and demonstrations by Egyptian workers in various sectors and organizations.  Students, pharmacists, lawyers, railway drivers, media people, and even microbus drivers and street cleaners are all demanding more just rights, protesting against their decreasing incentives or trying to rebel against their poor economic status. And as […]

  In an unprecedented action, the first following the recent Israeli war on Gaza, workers of the Egyptian Fertilizers Company in Suez protested on Saturday, 7 February against the export of fertilizers to Israel. The Egyptian Fertilizers Company is owned by Onsi and Nassef Sawiris under the umbrella of Orascom Construction Industries.  The Egyptian Fertilizers […]

Numerous protests against Israel’s apartheid and massacres in Gaza have been held in South Africa.  One of the targets has been the Egyptian regime’s role in the siege of Gaza. — Ed. Memorandum To President Hosni Mubarak, president of the Arab Republic of Egypt 9 January 2009 We who have gathered today outside the Egyptian […]

“Egypt is playing a tawdry role in the current agony of the Palestinians; but it is not new, sadly.” — Dennis Brutus Remembering Egypt  Solitary I walked the sands beside the Pyramids hot soil beneath my feet: ageless the cloudless skies aeons above invisible stars: men laboured in dusty rags parched reeds wilted in shallows […]

The Egyptian leadership has taken a hiding from the Arab street for its inaction over Israel’s assault on the Palestinians.  Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran have removed all gloves by publicly accusing Egypt’s leadership of complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza. Arabs are aware, albeit repressed, that Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia (the Arab trio) […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  Beth Baron.  Egypt As a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics.   Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.  292 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-23857-2. In Egypt as a Woman Beth Baron explores the connections between Egyptian nationalism, gendered images and discourses of the nation, and the politics of elite Egyptian women from the late nineteenth […]

On the seventh of December 2006, 3,000 female garment workers went on strike in the Nile Delta town of Mahalla, which is home to 27,000 workers working in a textile mill, shoulder to shoulder.  It’s the biggest textile mill in the region.  These women workers went on strike and started marching in the factory compound, […]

  The road from the airport to the hotel shows the story: modern buildings partly conceal dilapidated, crowded structures that seem on the verge of collapse.  Ancient jalopies chug along as if by inertia, while the latest luxury models zip past them.  Huge billboards advertise multinational corporations.  All this goes side by side with centuries-old […]

April 6, 2008 — The subsidized “country bread” of Egypt costs less than a single U.S. cent per loaf.  Not surprisingly, this product has seen heightened demand over the last few months as the price of unsubsidized loaves on the streets of Cairo has increased by nearly 30%.  Even though Egypt imports roughly 7 million […]

6 April 2008 — The government’s police attacked the Mahalla workers’ strike.  Since the night of 5 April, so many worker leaders have been arrested.  Police besieged the city.  The strike couldn’t start in the morning.  In the afternoon, workers, their families, and the unemployed started demonstrations.  Police have attacked brutally with real bullets and […]

Iman Bibars.  Victims and Heroines: Women, Welfare, and the Egyptian State.  London: Zed Books, 2001.  x + 330 pp. Bibliography, index. This sensitively written and thought-provoking book is based on the author’s fieldwork in seven poor neighborhoods within the Cairo-Alexandria conurbation.  Even though a systematic survey was conducted in one of the research sites, the major […]

The Egyptian writer and novelist Nawal El Saadawi well known both in the Arab world and internationally is facing a political and religious campaign mounted against her by the authorities of Al-Azhar.  Basing themselves on a play written by her entitled “God Resigns at the Summit Meeting” published during the month of January 2007 in […]

“We cannot admit rivals in the East or even the central parts of Africa . . . to a considerable extent, if not entirely, we must be prepared to apply a sort of Munro [sic] doctrine to much of Africa.” — Lord Carnarvon1 The original Monroe Doctrine initiated in 1824 prevented European interference in the […]