sailingaway
03-10-2013, 12:17 AM
When Kerry landed in Egypt last week, on his first magical mystery tour through the Middle East in his new role, many of the liberals fighting the Islamist-dominated government of President Mohamed Morsi refused to meet him. I was among those in the broad coalition of the National Salvation Front who accepted the invitation and agreed to make a few remarks.
I hoped I could make Kerry feel the intense hopes and bitter disappointments experienced by Egypt’s revolutionaries. These same emotions are what drive so many to keep pouring into the streets in the face of savage government repression, keeping the revolution alive day after day, week after week. With parliamentary elections approaching in April, the Front announced it would boycott and the protests intensify.
That the meeting with Kerry took place in the “Aida” hall of the Marriott Hotel seemed somehow appropriate. A modern expression of a failed colonial past, it was built around a 19th-century palace constructed by a corrupt khedive to honor the French emperor for building the Suez Canal.
This, condensed a bit, is what I said there:
Secretary of State Kerry,
You are in Egypt at a very complex moment: a time when we are living pain and hope, dreams and nightmares—a revolution against tyranny.
Egypt does not need new aid from the United States. Egypt needs to build a new relationship on new foundations. Our country is not a lab for your experiments or a testing ground for your theories.
more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/09/egyptians-to-john-kerry-stop-backing-dictators.html
I hoped I could make Kerry feel the intense hopes and bitter disappointments experienced by Egypt’s revolutionaries. These same emotions are what drive so many to keep pouring into the streets in the face of savage government repression, keeping the revolution alive day after day, week after week. With parliamentary elections approaching in April, the Front announced it would boycott and the protests intensify.
That the meeting with Kerry took place in the “Aida” hall of the Marriott Hotel seemed somehow appropriate. A modern expression of a failed colonial past, it was built around a 19th-century palace constructed by a corrupt khedive to honor the French emperor for building the Suez Canal.
This, condensed a bit, is what I said there:
Secretary of State Kerry,
You are in Egypt at a very complex moment: a time when we are living pain and hope, dreams and nightmares—a revolution against tyranny.
Egypt does not need new aid from the United States. Egypt needs to build a new relationship on new foundations. Our country is not a lab for your experiments or a testing ground for your theories.
more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/09/egyptians-to-john-kerry-stop-backing-dictators.html