Hi! My name is Omar Kamel - video producer, musician, writer, photographer, occasional blogger. This is my personal blog and most of the content here is not in any way work-related.
If you're trying to contact me for professional/commercial reasons - you're better off visiting my work site at ubikmedia.info
منذ خلع الرئيس مبارك و نحن نعاني من مشاكل لغوية. فعندما أعلن البيان الثالث للمجلس العسكري بكل وضوح ان مبارك هو الذي كلفه بإدارة شئون البلاد – سمع الشعب رسالة اخرى تماماً – و هي ان سلطة المجلس العسكري تنبع من الثورة و انه كُلِف من طرف الشعب و بهدف إستكمال الثورة، و انه ساعد في خلع مبارك في سبيل الثورة و الإرادة الشعبية و الشرعية الثورية.
إستندنا في ذلك الي التصريحات العسكرية التي أكدت ان الجيش المصري وقف مع الثورة، و بأن الجيش المصري وعد بأن لا يستخدم العنف ضد اهل وطنه، و انه قد قدر شجاعة الشعب المصري و قد إحترم حجم طموحاته و تضامن مع الشعب و تبنى احلامه.
Several years ago I was sitting in a restaurant downtown. There were no prophetic utterances of ‘revolution’ or but my friend was expressing fears regarding Islamist control of Egypt.
‘What, exactly, are you worried about?’ I would ask.
The Hijab.
Alcohol was a second issue.
My counter at the time was that if the government / leadership was actually honest, then the amount of good they could accomplish would by far exceed what I considered the mild inconveniences involved.
If the Brotherhood would swoop in, I argued, run a non-corrupt, honest government, and actually channel the country’s resources to create better standards of living for millions now deprived of it several stages down along Maslow’s Pyramid – then who the hell am I to complain if I can’t have a drink?
But, of course, that’s simplistic.
It’s just as easy to fear for freedom of expression in the arts, in literature, in ways that could, to many of us, stifle our minds – an immediate threat to our creativity.
Any threat to thought is oppression.
The smartest thing the Muslim Brotherhood should do right now – and which would go some way to restoring their credibility to the revolutionaries who have so often felt at best ‘abandoned’ by them – would be to push for an immediate civilian retrial of all Military Trial victims, and a complete cessation on the use of Military Trials against civilians.
I went to the nearby election committee today, but not to vote.
I went and I saw the long queues of voters, people whose right to vote, whose freedom to vote has been paid for by the blood of those who can no longer share in the experience.
I saw the posters of candidates, and it occurred to me – that I had never seen most of them in Tahrir. They are not leaders, they are vultures, preying on our dead.
I wanted to take some photos and wanted to shoot some video as outlined in an idea I explained in this video on YouTube.
Instead I got into a 2-3 hour conversation with a lieutenant colonel from the army.
“Alas,” said the mouse, “the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.”
“You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up. The Cat & the Mouse – Franz Kafka
We all know WHY the elections are ridiculous –
• We have fresh blood on the streets – everybody’s been busy in battle.
• Nobody has had time to study the process OR the candidates.
• Even university graduates don’t understand the process.
• Treason law has been issued, but far too late to be used this time.
• They are a logistical DISASTER as outlined by @Egyptocracy in this document here – http://bit.ly/uwHnpb
• Emergency Law is still active. That simply means the ruling authority in the country itself doesn’t believe conditions are ‘appropriate’.
• Etc.
Morrison continues to show little to no respect for the actual CHARACTERS he gets his paws on. He is more than happy to dump the basic core traits of a character in order to get a cheap thrill out of them. This is why I love Geoff Johns work and why I can’t read Morrison without wincing at what he does to the characters. Superman does not hold criminals over ledges, that’s BATMAN. Superman does not break bones, again – that’s BATMAN. as for Batman, Batman does NOT use a gun, would never ever use a gun, like he had him do in Final Crisis for the super-cheap ‘Lost in Time’ Batman ‘dead’ plot line.
If he wants to write a super powered Punisher story, then he should create a new character who fits that description. Not reconfigure Superman’s character to have him act that way.
Sorry, but Morrison continues to be a talentless overrated hack who likes oversized plots, has no respect for the characters he writes, and thinks non-stop action sequences make up for his complete inability to write scenes that are actually touching on a human level.
Today marks the 10th day since the official start of the second protest / demonstration / sleep-in / camp-out at Tahrir Square. To some of us, this round of protests started out about 19 days ago – on the 28th of June – when, under somewhat fuzzy circumstances, a battle erupted between the Central Security Forces and the protesters in Tahrir who were there in solidarity with some families of martyrs of the revolution.
Battle in Tahrir With Interviews (This one’s only in Arabic, sorry…)
I have not been there every single day, but I was there during the battle that started on the evening of June 28th and lasted well into the next day – despite a statement from the Minister of the Interior released at around 2am on the 29th claiming that he had ordered his forces to retreat in order to put an end to the fighting. On the ground, there was no sign of any such retreat – and more than 10 hours later, protesters were still being attacked by State Security forces, men dressed in civilian clothes who were armed with blades and Molotov cocktails, and some citizens who later said they had been duped by police officers into joining the fight on the premise that they were defending the neighborhood of Abdeen from ‘thugs’ who were planning to attack.
I was not there to witness the end of the battle, I simply didn’t last that long. I had arrived in Tahrir at around 9:30pm, and after about 11 hours of fighting and filming, I had simply inhaled too much gas, stressed out too many muscles, dodged one too many rocks and at least one gas canister that had been fired directly towards my face, I was out of camera batteries, my phone battery had died down, and I had been struck in the back by a rock thrown hard against me by a fellow protester who perhaps had been too meek to make it to the front lines but who still thought he should give it a shot.
I went home and I slept.
I knew we would win. I knew that when I looked around me at around midnight, 3 or more hours into the battle and realized that our numbers had increased dramatically. When I first arrived at Tahrir, we could not have numbered more than 500-1000 but by midnight – we were at least 8,000 strong. The people had heard of the battle, and they came to the square, many of them knowing full well that a battle was raging – that they were putting themselves at risk just by showing up, and yet – they came.
After the square had been captured, many decided to stay behind. It had cost us dearly. At least one was confirmed dead, and I know of at least two other cases that may also have been killed. One of the field medics told me two days later that a girl had been admitted to their tent in Tahrir with no pulse, and that she had most likely died as well. In the hours that I had been there, I had seen the motorcycles, that had been acting as our field ambulances, carry wounded protesters past me at least once every minute or so during the whole night. There would be two riders on the bike, and they would speed though our crowds, make it to the front lines, sandwich the wounded between them and speed back through the battle, taking him back to the ambulances in the square.
It was a long, long, night.
Since then, things have been hectic – between trying to explain to people what had happened, uploading videos, making videos, and preparing for July 8th, we were all quite busy – but today – I woke up with a bad cold – so I have time to outline some observations that I’ve only had the time to briefly tweet in compact form.
