Protests in Egypt.
I've been reading a lot of news since its strongly encouraged for us to not be going too far from the dorms, or at least was yesterday. They, the program people, still don't want us to travel as of yet.
Everyone should be reading about the Palestine Papers for sure, tons about Egypt.
The New Yorker
BBC, BBC Pictures
NYT
AlJazeera, 2, 3, 4, 5
They're absurd and I was late reading them, but an Israeli minister who admittedly doesn't care about the law, the Obama administration who will do everything possible in public to push the peace process forward without care to the circumstances, and complete utter Israeli and American disregard for any sense of justice in the negotiations, resting on brute force and the upper hand. It's depressing and revels another level of disillusion that I didn't think was possible on Palestine. We've all sunk a little lower now.
And Egypt.
I tried, against the better advice of program directors here to check out what was happening early in the day. I got close enough to one of the neighborhoods to hear the screaming, but the traffic and crowding was crazy and I honestly didn't want to put myself in a position alone with a camera in a mob. I walked around for a while then jumped in a cab. There was for sure lots of energy in the streets and everyone was talking about the protests. I also saw more police than ever before. Huge trucks and trailers full of guys, at the time mostly hanging out and waiting for things to get worse, decked out in riot gear and looking pretty intimidating. There was security still around the coptic churches and tons around the police stations themselves. Traffic was insane from the closed roads, check points and police vehicles. I know what they mean now in reports about so little actual information being available. In a climate where saying anything of meaning can get you into a lot of trouble and just protesting itself can get you in a lot of trouble, everything will stay subdued until... it doesn't. It just takes that first person who is no longer scared of the security forces, uses the numbers behind him and just goes for it. That may happen, it happened last night, or it may not and huge crowds may gather and then leave. There's no "organization" no central command, just fed up people gathered. There's also no way of knowing where it will go if anywhere. As far as I know the protests have stopped now, but they could start again, they could not start again, anything could happen.
Lots of pictures are a fortunate consequence of my day out. I found riding around in a tram for as far as it would take me to be a good way of taking lots of pictures from a good view of the street and not be insulting or get too many stares. The tram costs about....5¢ to get on too.
Overall tram idea.
I've been reading a lot of news since its strongly encouraged for us to not be going too far from the dorms, or at least was yesterday. They, the program people, still don't want us to travel as of yet.
Everyone should be reading about the Palestine Papers for sure, tons about Egypt.
The New Yorker
BBC, BBC Pictures
NYT
AlJazeera, 2, 3, 4, 5
They're absurd and I was late reading them, but an Israeli minister who admittedly doesn't care about the law, the Obama administration who will do everything possible in public to push the peace process forward without care to the circumstances, and complete utter Israeli and American disregard for any sense of justice in the negotiations, resting on brute force and the upper hand. It's depressing and revels another level of disillusion that I didn't think was possible on Palestine. We've all sunk a little lower now.
And Egypt.
I tried, against the better advice of program directors here to check out what was happening early in the day. I got close enough to one of the neighborhoods to hear the screaming, but the traffic and crowding was crazy and I honestly didn't want to put myself in a position alone with a camera in a mob. I walked around for a while then jumped in a cab. There was for sure lots of energy in the streets and everyone was talking about the protests. I also saw more police than ever before. Huge trucks and trailers full of guys, at the time mostly hanging out and waiting for things to get worse, decked out in riot gear and looking pretty intimidating. There was security still around the coptic churches and tons around the police stations themselves. Traffic was insane from the closed roads, check points and police vehicles. I know what they mean now in reports about so little actual information being available. In a climate where saying anything of meaning can get you into a lot of trouble and just protesting itself can get you in a lot of trouble, everything will stay subdued until... it doesn't. It just takes that first person who is no longer scared of the security forces, uses the numbers behind him and just goes for it. That may happen, it happened last night, or it may not and huge crowds may gather and then leave. There's no "organization" no central command, just fed up people gathered. There's also no way of knowing where it will go if anywhere. As far as I know the protests have stopped now, but they could start again, they could not start again, anything could happen.
Lots of pictures are a fortunate consequence of my day out. I found riding around in a tram for as far as it would take me to be a good way of taking lots of pictures from a good view of the street and not be insulting or get too many stares. The tram costs about....5¢ to get on too.
This is the guy's dorms neighborhood, affectionately called the hood by some guys from last semester. Izbet Saad is what the name sounds like, but I've yet to see it written. This is a kind of street market there. It's our daily place for lunch, shisha, juice, koshari, foul, filafil, etc.
I don't think we want to know what these animals are for, but they were in the neighborhood.
From inside the tram
Pretty standard coffee shop, taken from the tram. In more rundown or less trafficked areas you can still get shisha inside, but they're all great for sweet tea, turkish coffee, or shaleeb, a hot milk thing with coconut, nuts and dried fruit in it. A coffee or tea will run you about 20¢.
The fruit/veggie market at the end of this tram line, it was pretty close to where the protests where.
Pretty standard tram.
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