When watching Bassem Youssef skillfully deliver satiric political commentary on “El-Bernameg” (The Program), it is impossible not to be almost startled by the resemblance to Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show”. The similar set and the fact that, let’s be honest, they kind of look the same, doesn’t help. Youssef’s recent legal trouble in Egypt – namely […]
Mickey Mouse is pulling apart a bomb: inside is the torso of George W. Bush, and they’re both looking perfectly happy about the whole thing. Soraya Morayef is taking a photo of the wall where these figures are painted, on a busy street in downtown Cairo, when a man walks up to her and asks […]
One of yesterday’s New York Times headlines addressed the problem of sexual violence in Egypt that has “become too big to ignore”. The article by Mayy El Sheikh and David Kirkpatrick, “Rise in Sexual Assaults in Egypt Sets off Clash Over Blame” (originally titled: “Egyptian Women Blamed for Sexual Assaults”), discusses the ongoing – and seemingly increasingly […]
I had the opportunity to sit down with Rana Allam, Managing Editor of the Daily News Egypt towards the end of January this year, just days before the two-year anniversary of the start of the Egyptian uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak. Not surprisingly, the publication’s modest offices, located in the downtown Cairo neighborhood of El Dokki, […]
It’s quite a weekend for New York’s prodigal child. Hip-Hop, that burst of youthful energy that was put out into the universe 30 plus years ago is coming back home from several places at once. It’s arriving at a time when Rap music, in its birthplace, confusingly straddles the realms of hyper-capitalism, political activism, youth expression, marginalized’s […]
Our weekly feature profiling African photo-blogs and/or tumblrs moves to Cairo this week, as we take a scroll through Picture Masr, a Tumblr created by Cairo resident and Phd student Mohamed Elshahed. The images of “Egypt (mostly Cairo) beyond your Google image search results. The beauty of everyday life and all that is ordinary,” were picked up […]
A week ago the Huffington Post published an article written by Melissa Jeltsen on an increasingly familiar name in women’s activism in the Arab world. The article, entitled “Mona Eltahawy, Egyptian-American Activist, On the Power of Protest,” has a rather misleading title. The focus of the article was not really Ms. Eltahawy’s thoughts on protest […]
I recently visited the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (better known by its acronym MoCADA) in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn to view its current exhibition: NEWSFEED: Anonymity & Social Media in African Revolutions and Beyond. Running through January 20, the exhibition is part of a larger curatorial series with satellite exhibitions at the nearby 2AC […]
A few days ago Tom posted another installment of 10 African films to watch out for, one of which is the documentary “Underground/On the Surface,” on the popular “second-class” youth music genre mahragan shaabi. While we wait to see the documentary for ourselves next year, above and below are some home-made videos of young men dancing […]
Last week, as he made a bid to become Egypt’s latest dictator, plunging the country into a constitutional crisis, and drawing new crowds to Tahrir Square, TIME magazine interviewed Mohamed Morsi. The ‘exclusive’ interview took the title ‘We’re Learning How to Be Free’ — which, in light of Morsi’s recent attempt to grant himself un-democratic […]
