Just saw this video, an amateur documentary about a village in Egypt - Kafr el Eloww - where the Government confiscated 27 feddans (1 feddan = 4200 sq metres).
One fine morning, most men of the village were summoned to the police station where they were detained - to facilitate the task of expelling the rest of the inhabitants.
People lost their land, their houses were wrecked.
The announced compensation of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (per family, I guess?) - 1700 USD, a mere fraction of the land's worth - was never paid out. Of course.
This land was actually handed out by late president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the fifties, during Egypt's long flirt with socialism. The idea was, at the time, that the concentration of capital in the hands of a few landowners (my family included) was a remnant of colonialist times and was bad for growth. (the first part of the argument may be true but the second is a common mistake. Regardless, I would've voted for that nationalisation policy at the time...)
And now, it's also the government confiscating the land. Galal Amin's argument that we're heading towards a pre-1952 economy and society seems almost prophetic.
And if one thinks pre-1952, we're almost bound to think 'pre-revolution'... are we?)
"في العراء" (found here).
The footage of the destroyed fields of sugarcane reminded me of the bulldozed olive fields in Palestine - only in this case, it's not an occupation. It's the Egyptian government vs. the Egyptian people. Which makes it even more disigusting. It happened there, people.
People were insulted, beaten up. Police officers carried blank arrest orders, and those who objected would be arrested and the officer would pen down their name to give their tyranny a breath of legitimacy..
A7a. This country is going to hell and it's going fast.
One fine morning, most men of the village were summoned to the police station where they were detained - to facilitate the task of expelling the rest of the inhabitants.
People lost their land, their houses were wrecked.
The announced compensation of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (per family, I guess?) - 1700 USD, a mere fraction of the land's worth - was never paid out. Of course.
This land was actually handed out by late president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the fifties, during Egypt's long flirt with socialism. The idea was, at the time, that the concentration of capital in the hands of a few landowners (my family included) was a remnant of colonialist times and was bad for growth. (the first part of the argument may be true but the second is a common mistake. Regardless, I would've voted for that nationalisation policy at the time...)
And now, it's also the government confiscating the land. Galal Amin's argument that we're heading towards a pre-1952 economy and society seems almost prophetic.
And if one thinks pre-1952, we're almost bound to think 'pre-revolution'... are we?)
"في العراء" (found here).
The footage of the destroyed fields of sugarcane reminded me of the bulldozed olive fields in Palestine - only in this case, it's not an occupation. It's the Egyptian government vs. the Egyptian people. Which makes it even more disigusting. It happened there, people.
People were insulted, beaten up. Police officers carried blank arrest orders, and those who objected would be arrested and the officer would pen down their name to give their tyranny a breath of legitimacy..
A7a. This country is going to hell and it's going fast.
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