Since then the military has controlled the government and members of the Muslim Brotherhood control Parliament.

Marco Werman speaks with the BBC’s Yolande Knell about the power struggle within Egypt.

Read tweets about Egypt

Twenty-six-year-old Josh Leffler sits in a Cairo cafe smoking a water pipe while men play dominoes and watch TV nearby. The American teacher doesn’t look stereotypically Egyptian, but after four years of living in downtown Cairo, he does blend in. And he loves it.

“I can go to my regular café anytime of the day and I will always sit with people,” Leffler says. “If I go to a coffee shop in Los Angeles and do this it doesn’t quite work like that, and so this aspect of community, it’s really nice.”

Yet even for Leffler who has a community here, the past year has been tense. During the revolution he got detained a few times. And lately with the protests downtown he’s felt like some Egyptians look at him differently as a foreigner.

“After I was detained a couple of times I began to act much more careful,” he said. That includes keeping his camera hidden when walking on the streets.

Khaled Fahmy, the chair of the history department at the American University in Cairo said the anti-foreigner sentiment that Leffler is experiencing doesn’t come out of nowhere.

There have been foreign plots in Egypt before, like the notorious Lavon Affair in 1954, when Israel was accused of recruiting Egyptians to plant bombs inside Egypt. And Fahmy said Egyptians don’t forget..

“Egyptians are very aware, in their recent history, of outside interventions. So this is a sensitive point, more so than elsewhere,” he said. “But that’s not the issue. The issue now is that there is a deliberate use of this xenophobic language, of this suspicion of foreigners.”

Fahmy and other critics say the current government – the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF – is taking this very real sense of outside threat and whipping it up into fullblown xenophobia through State TV and radio.

“There is a deliberate use of this xenophobic language, of this suspicion of foreigners by SCAF and by the Minister of International Cooperation,” he said.

Hossam Baghat, Director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said there’s always been racism in Egypt. But these days his organization gets lots of complaints from people who have never been targeted before.

“In the past most of the complaints we received were by migrants, or refugees or asylum seekers with black skin that were subject to racially motivated harassment in Egypt,” Baghat said. “But since January of 2011 most of the complaints have been received by people who were targeted because of their fair skin or because they come from the West.”

There have been verbal and physical attacks, as well as citizen arrests. Baghat said foreigners are caught in the crossfire as the Egyptian government tries to undermine the continued protests.

“It presents the political protest movement in Egypt as being primarily pushed by the famous foreign agendas. And the foreign agendas are normally understood to mean western agendas,” he said.

Rasha Azaizy, spokesperson for the Egyptian Tourism Ministry, said there may seem to be a lack of security on the streets. But she didn’t see any hostility towards tourists or foreigners.

“It is not aimed at foreigners, it is just random,” she said. “And because of the language barrier, or the randomness of the whole thing. Stop and search is something that can happen in any city in the world. Egyptians are extremely warm and welcoming people. Very friendly.”

Azaizy said even with the unrest this year 10 million tourists came to Egypt, but that’s a drop of 30 percent. Even so, Historian Khaled Fahmy said it’s clear there is a concerted campaign against foreigners. And he said the Egyptian government shouldn’t just worry about the safety of tourists, but about the very foundation of Egyptian society.

“Egypt throughout its long history thrived not by being shunned off and shut out and inward looking, but rather by being open and engaged, and by interacting.”

As for American teacher Josh Leffler, he still considers Egypt his second home, and hopes to stay. But he added, “I’ll see how it goes.”

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague says Syria's president heads a "doomed regime as well as a murdering regime" (Photo: BBC)

The two countries, that are permanent members of the Security Council, see any such resolution as a potential violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

They were the receiving-end of a lot of criticism.

US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton responded, “What more do we need to know to act decisively in the Security Council?”

The BBC Russian service invited comments from listeners about Russia’s stand on Syria. These are some of the comments the service received. We’ve voiced the comments.

Dorsey’s been scribbling furiously since the terrible violence in Port Said.

Marco Werman speaks with Dorsey about what’s behind the violence and perhaps the reaction or lack of it by Egyptian authorities.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: The violence yesterday in Egypt involved rival groups of hardcore soccer fans known as Ultras. Supporters of the local Port Said team, Al-Masry, attacked the Ultra rooting for Cairo’s Al-Ahly. And police at the stadium reportedly stood by for the most part. That’s significant because the Cairo Ultras have a long history of clashing with police. They also played a key role in the protests against police and other security forces during Egypt’s revolution last year. James Dorsey writes about the intersection between soccer and politics. His blog is called The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

James Dorsey: Soccer in Egypt as well as in the rest of the Middle East is from its inception political and has been political ever since. So, none of this violence is purely soccer related. Soccer in the Middle East is a battlefield, and that battle is often fought very bloody.

Werman: The Ultras have some political significance, partly because of the origins of their team, Al-Ahly, and partly because of the stand they took during Egypt’s revolution last year, pushing back against the forces of law and order in Tahrir Square. Is there a political backdrop to the Port Said team, Al-Masry?

Dorsey: Every team was politically founded. Those political origins really don’t mean much anymore. It means nothing, far likely to be anti-monarchists in a country where the monarchy no longer, hasn’t existed for 50 years. On top of that, in essence you have within every club three groups. You have the fans who by in large are anti-regime and clashed with the regime over a number of years prior to Mubarak’s departure. You have management, which was appointed by the regime. And you have the players who because the regime wanted to associate itself with soccer in a bid to shore up its own image, being able to distract attention and at times manipulate the motions, who became celebrities and they were showered with gifts, with attention by the regime. And so they stood on the sidelines during the revolt and that’s created tensions in the relations between the fans and the players.

Werman: So the Ultras, it’s a generic that doesn’t just apply to Al-Ahly.

Dorsey: That’s correct, Ultras first appeared in I think it was 1939 in Brazil, and then the next Ultra groups were in the 1950s in Italy. And there are differences between the groups, but fundamentally they are militant committed soccer fans who feel that they are the sole owners of the club and the only really true supporters. Management in many of the countries, as well as the players, are viewed as hired guns. When they get a better offer they move on. In Egypt, the management is not only a hired guy, but it’s an agent of the government.

Werman: And the Ultras who went to Tahrir Square to support the protestors last year, were they specifically Ultras in support of al-Ahly or various Ultras?

Dorsey: You have two major soccer groups in Cairo, Ahly is one, and it’s arch rival, Zamalek, which was the British club many, many years ago. And the Ultras for both of those groups were equally important and equally represented in the anti-Mubarak demonstrations. They are Ultras and they perceive themselves as such. They are extreme, so that’s why they’re called Ultras. They are ultra in the way they support their party.

Werman: James Dorsey is a researcher at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute. His blog is The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, which we’ll link to on our site, theworld.org. James Dorsey, thanks a lot.

Dorsey: My pleasure, take care.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read tweets about Egypt’s soccer violence

The bazaar or souk we are looking for is in Egypt’s capital, Cairo.

This marketplace in the city’s Islamic district has been continuously open since the Middle Ages and remains very popular and crowded even today.

Shoppers can wander around the narrow alleys or pop into tiny cafes serving strong coffee and haggle over prices with vendors who sell everything from chandeliers and spices to hookahs and shisha.

But there is something else that unfortunately shows up sale: illegal ivory.

Khan el-Khalili is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to wild life expert Esmond Martin who investigated the Egyptian ivory trade for the conservation group Traffic.

• Geo Quiz Podcast on iTunes
• Geo Quiz Podcast via RSS
• The World on Facebook
• Follow @geoquiz
  

Syrian troops are deployed in a Damascus suburb as tension mounts.

The demonstrations were largely peaceful. But pro-democracy activists complain that the Egyptian military keeps violating the human rights of protesters.

And that puts them on a collision course with supporters of the military.

After dark, in a dusty cul-de-sac in a ramshackle section of Cairo’s Heliopolis neighborhood, several young Egyptian men are staging a show. They’ve rigged a laptop to a precarious tower of old speakers; and they’re projecting a film onto a 3-by-3-foot screen.

Called “Kazeboon,” the film is a compilation of video clips that show Egyptian security forces chasing, beating and shooting at protesters during clashes in November and December.

Those clips are interspersed with news footage of generals from Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF. The generals deny that any abuse has taken place; they stress that the armed forces have exercised self-restraint. With its grainy footage and melodramatic soundtrack, the video is neither slick nor subtle, but that’s not the point.

“We organized this event to show people who didn’t go to Tahrir Square what is happening, and to make them aware of crimes the SCAF has committed,” said 22-year-old Ahmed Khalil.

Khalil, a computer science student, helped organize tonight’s viewing and said he is happy with the turnout. But in such a densely populated area, when Cairo’s famed nightlife is just hitting its stride, it would seem that 150 young men isn’t much of a crowd.

“Most of the people who live in this neighborhood aren’t interested in coming here,” Khalil said. “They prefer to stay at home because they believe that SCAF will secure the country. So even this number of people is a positive sign.”

Then, almost as if Khalil predicted it, the street behind us filled with young men chanting in support of Egypt’s ruling military council.

The activists and the pro-military youth faced off with competing chants.

The activists shouted, “Down with the military regime.”

Their rivals yelled, “the army and the people are one hand.”

Cars and buses stopped in the street while passengers gawked; and pedestrians whipped out their cell phones to take pictures. Then, after a few shoves, the youths separated.

The incident in Heliopolis illustrates how divided Egyptians are as they mark the one-year anniversary of the start of Egypt’s revolution.

The “Askar Kazeboon,” or “Military Liars,” campaign is an attempt by activists to win more people to their view that little has changed since the revolution that overthrew long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak. SCAF forces, they say, are just as brutal as Mubarak’s were.

The most recent clashes took place in mid-December and made an icon of a young Egyptian woman who was filmed being violently kicked by black-clad riot troops while lying prone, her black veil or niqab pulled up to expose her bra.

“At that point we decided enough is enough and we have to start a campaign of truth showing people what really happens on the street, altering their major media capability by going to the street with the truth,” said Ramy Shaath, general coordinator of the Free Egyptians Group which is helping coordinate some Kazeboon viewings.

Shaath said they are trying to counter Egypt’s powerful state media machine, which owns television and radio stations and newspapers. State media routinely carries the statements of the Egyptian generals – without any balance – who paint pro-democracy activists as thugs.

Egyptians who can’t afford satellite dishes, Shaath said, are entirely dependent upon state media to help form their opinions.

But is the Askar Kazeboon campaign convincing anyone? Or, is it only attracting angry young men who already view the military council as the enemy?

“I have seen the shocking effect on people. I have seen people shocked,” Shaath said. “They were not believing what they were watching and started relating the lies they heard on state TV to the reality they are watching and started remember the kind of lies they used to hate from the Mubarak regime.”

And so on Wednesday, when tens of thousands of Egyptians poured into Tahrir Square, it was with a sense of trepidation. At the day’s end, Egypt’s health ministry said around 150 people were mildly injured – but not by security forces.

Most were accidentally crushed by the large celebratory crowds in the square. Riot police and troops didn’t have the opportunity to clash with protesters. They were conspicuously absent from the celebrations.

Boston.com: Picture from Tahrir Square

Read tweets about Egypt

The piece is called “Tahrir for Clarinet and Orchestra,” and it is the first movement of what will become a concerto in three movements.

I spoke to Mohammed Fairouz about what prompted him to write the piece, and he talked about a few moments in it, as they relate to events that began on Tahrir Square, one year ago today.

Imagine the composer writing music as he watched the uprising on television — with the sound off.

That’s what Fairouz did, from his apartment in New York City.

What he saw happening on TV, thousands of miles away, inspired “Tahrir for Clarinet and Orchestra,” which he wrote for his friend, clarinetist David Krakauer.

Krakauer, as Fairouz describes him, is a musician well-versed in Middle Eastern, Jewish Klezmer, as well as Arabic music, which made him a perfect fit for this piece.

In the music, the Egyptian people’s voices are represented by the orchestra, while the clarinet expresses the voice of the individual protester.

Fairouz talks about the sense of tension and angst in “Tahrir,” as well as a restlessness, and a dynamic sense that the protest movement is the only way forward.

Listen to the full version of “Tahrir for Clarinet and Orchestra”

Subscribe and follow The World’s Global Hit

• Global Hit Podcast on iTunes
• Global Hit Podcast via RSS
• Global Hit Archive (prior to June 2009)
• Global Hit on Facebook
• Follow @marcowerman
  

Imbaba protest in 2011 (Photo: monasosh/Flickr)

Atef is a lawyer and a lifetime resident of Imbaba. He leads me into a labyrinth of dirt alleyways, each no more than a few meters wide. The damp air is thick with dust and the smell of sewage.

Imbaba is one of the most densely-populated places in the world. Almost a million people live here, crammed into an area three times more crowded than Manhattan.

The streets all look the same. It feels like a person could be lost here for the rest of their life.

“This has been my neighborhood for a long time,” Atef said. “So, of course, I know all the streets. I know what leads to where.”

A year ago, Atef joined the uprising in Tahrir Square.

Those protests were about toppling Hosni Mubarak. For Atef, that meant changing the way Egypt works.

For decades, Mubarak’s government saw places like Imbaba as a liability – a potential source of opposition. The government simply ignored the neighborhood, failing to provide even the most basic services.

People would complain. But the former regime ruled Imbaba by sowing fear. The dreaded agents of state security were always listening. And for anyone who dared criticize the regime, arrest, torture and even death were never far off.

“The regime wanted us to think of them as the father and the mother of all the people,” Atef said. “The government does everything and the people do nothing. They don’t participate in political life. In one party rule, the people weren’t allowed to have a role.”

Atef believes that if Egyptian democracy is really going to work, people must be able to take control of their own communities. That’s where his neighborhood committee comes in. During last winter’s uprising, Khaled organized a group of local men to protect homes and business from looters and thugs.

They armed themselves with whatever they had – broomsticks, machetes, crowbars. They set up checkpoints and patrolled these alleyways. After the protests, most neighborhood committees in Cairo dissolved.

Not in Imbaba.

Within days of Mubarak’s fall, neighbors started calling for Khaled’s group to do more. Somebody wanted them to train unemployed young people to direct traffic. Another wanted them to collect dues from each household and fund a garbage collection system.

Khaled’s neighbors’ attitudes towards their community had changed.

“The revolution was a big turning point,” Atef said. “Before the revolution, people here didn’t have a sense of belonging to the neighborhood because of what the old regime had done to them. But now, people here feel that this country belongs to them again. And they want to do something about it.”

In a country that has never had local government, the idea of neighbors organizing themselves to improve their community was, well, revolutionary. Since then, Khaled’s little committee has kicked into overdrive.

They’ve opened offices all over Imbaba. Established a modest budget and attracted a small army of 1,500 volunteers.

There are, Khaled says, Muslims and Christians represented on the committee. And, they’ve welcomed members of all political stripes.

They’ve organized soccer tournaments and street cleanups.

They’ve arranged to have gas lines and streetlights installed.

They’ve mediated disputes between rival businessmen.

Anyone listening to this outside of Egypt would think that these things would be the job of the government.

“We are the government,” Atef said. “There was a vacuum after the revolution and it was necessary to fill that because this is our country.”

The committee meets in an alleyway around the corner from Atef ‘s apartment. He takes his spot on a chair under a streetlight and greets committee members.

By 8:30, a dozen men have assembled on chairs borrowed wooden chairs from the coffee shop at the end of the alleyway. Atef reminds me that just months ago, attending a meeting like this might have landed us all in jail.

“In the days of the tyrant, somebody would have reported tonight’s meeting to the state security authorities,” Atef said. “And then, after 3 a.m., there would be a knock on he door and we’d all be taken away to jail. But you would be okay. Your embassy would come and bail you out.”

There’s not a hint of fear tonight, as Atef calls the meeting to order. There’s discussion about food prices, immunization and garbage.

We’ve been blocking the alleyway and cars want to pass. So the meeting adjourns briefly as committee members scatter. When they reconvene, Atef calls on Mr. Nasr to take the floor to report back from his trip to the local social security office.

“It’s so crowded and chaotic,” Nasr said. “There are big crowds and people have to wait in line for hours. And there are lots of arguments in line and with the clerks. Meanwhile, the manager just sits in his office and doesn’t care.”

Imbaba’s poorest residents collect food stamps each month at the chaotic social security.

“Men and women end up waiting in line from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon,” Nasr said. “And naturally, when they get to the clerk they are so fed up. The clerk is fed up too.”

It’s been that way for years – under Mubarak’s rule nothing could be done about it. But the neighborhood committee is about to demand changes.

“I went upstairs to meet the manager in his office. I told him that the least he could do is give out numbered tickets like they do in banks so people can sit and be comfortable until their number is called. The manager was cooperative. But his boss was arrogant, just like the old regime used to be. Of course, I kept my cool. I told him his arrogance would not go unnoticed and that we would file a complaint. I made sure to tell him that our voices will be heard,” Nasr said.

“That’s good,” Atef said. “It will give the message to the social security employees that we paid them respect and we didn’t go behind their backs and directly to the governor. Am I right? Ok. We will assemble a sub committee and it will go on Monday. Who wants to participate? Now, onto the next item. Public hygiene and cleaning.”

The meeting draws to a close just before midnight. Khaled and his friends want to know what I think about the neighborhood committee. I tell them that in the years I’ve been coming to Egypt I’ve heard complaints about just how difficult life has become here.

But I’ve never once heard anyone offer solutions. Until now. That’s exciting.

What I don’t tell them is that I wonder just how effective their neighborhood committee will be.

Wael Ghonim (Photo: Facebook Page)

As administrator of a Facebook page, he urged people to take to the streets.

He recounts his experiences in a new memoir, Revolution 2.0.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Many who are calling for change in Syria are drawing inspiration from the leaders of other Arab Spring revolts. One of them is Wael Ghonim. He was a key figure in the protest movement in Egypt. At the time, he was an executive with Google. Ghonim describes his experiences in a new book called “Revolution 2.0″. His involvement with the revolution began with a Facebook page critical of the Egyptian police. Then, in mid January of last year, he posted a message inviting Egyptians to gather in protest on January 25th – a date set aside each year in Egypt as Police Day. His call helped organize the first protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. I asked Ghonim what he was doing exactly one year ago today.

Wael Ghonim: I was in Dubai at the time. I was sitting down in my small study room, campaigning for 25th of January. The call to take to the streets started on the 14th, when I said, “Today is the 14th. The Police Day is on the 25th. If one hundred thousand Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo, we’re going to achieve what we all want,” and at the time, after Tunisia, what we wanted was Mubarak to follow Ben Ali. So I was sitting down, campaigning, and asking Egyptians on Facebook to take the invitations to the street and distribute it and print it, and collaborating with some activists on the locations of the protests and how it’s going to work.

Werman: And then when did you go to Cairo?

Ghonim: I arrived a couple of days before 25th. I stayed in a hotel, actually, because I really wanted to make sure that I’m not under any security threat. On the 25th, I was happy. I saw things happening and I started to be kind of scared. I started to think that this is becoming very big and they are going to somehow find me. On the 26th night, I felt it was very dangerous to remain in the hotel. I went to one of my friend’s apartments right after I had dinner with some Google colleagues who were just visiting Egypt by chance, and after that day, I was kidnapped. I was taken away from the street. Three security guards, you know, or four, I can’t remember precisely, basically pushed me down, forced me not to shout or scream, took the phone and, you know, they sort of paralyzed me so I can’t move, and then a car came and a few minutes later, they confiscated everything including my wallet, my watch, my glasses, my wristband that my wife gave to me, everything, and the 11 day struggle started.

Werman: And when you were in custody, what was going on for those 11 days?

Ghonim: The first day, I was heavily interrogated for hours. They wanted to try and build any connections. They really believed that the revolution is a conspiracy and that foreign countries want to topple the regime in Egypt and cause chaos and take the country for their own.

Werman: Yeah, they thought Google was in cahoots with the CIA, they told you.

Ghonim: Yeah, it was pretty funny to me, and at the same, it was pretty sad that the people who are supposed to be an intelligence in your country do think that this company, which makes profits outside the US much more than it makes inside the US as well as it’s built on reputation and privacy of users, would be just a CIA agency, and I really tried to explain to them. So I had, you know, I was sitting down, not talking to anyone, blindfolded, handcuffed. So you have all these things that come to your mind. Sometimes I felt like, ” If I’m still here, then it must be that things outside must be going in the right direction.” And on the other hand, sometimes I sit down, I was like “The fact that I’m here, no one is asking about me, is telling me that the protestors went back home and I’m forgotten, and I know for sure that if they want to harm me, that they will be able to do so simply because no one knows where I am.” You know, at the time, a lot of people died, on the 28th, actually hundreds, and, you know, they can just kill me and say that I died in whatever street. It was quite a strange period of time.

Werman: What was it like then, emerging into Cairo and finding this revolution at full boil that, in a way, you had started?

Ghonim: Well, firstly I don’t really think I started the revolution and I want to make this clear and this is not because I’m trying to be modest or belittle what I’ve done. The fact is we created a, you know, an invitation and when people took to the streets, the actual revolution happened. So it happened in the street. It wasn’t my call, really. I was very happy when I was outside, definitely. When they guy told me that, “You’re going to be free. We found out that you’re not guilty and you’re going to be out,” I felt like I was reborn, and, you know, when I took to the streets, when I went to Tahrir the next day, I felt like I was captured for 11 years because I’m seeing a new version of Egyptians. All over Sudan, everyone is empowered, passionate. Everyone was trying to tell the nation that Egypt is going to go in the right direction if this happens.

Werman: Now one thing that needs explaining is how, as a Google executive prior to your abduction, you were an administrator for a Facebook page. This was a page that you had set up to memorialize the killing of a young Egyptian man at the hands of the Egyptian police. The man’s name was Khalid Saeed. Why was the murder of Khalid Saeed so crucial for you own activism.

Ghonim: I think that the photo was the most critical part to me and many of the people in Egypt.

Werman: You had seen photographs of his beating, after he was beating and killed?

Ghonim: Yeah, his photo showed him in a horrible state, and when a lot of Egyptians saw the photo, they were shocked and people started to search for more information about him, and when I looked at it, I thought, “I have to do something.” It’s not just about him. I knew that this was systematic and this has to stop and there is no way you can stop this except by exposing the regime and putting more pressure on them. It was a very, you know, human rights-centric angle that has nothing to do with politics, and this is one of the reasons why the page was very successful. We really stayed away from the politics. You know, when we made the first invitation, easily everyone adopted it. It wasn’t like a political party that was, you know, asking everyone to go. If you would have personalized the invitation when the invitation when the invitation was put on the page . . .

Werman: On the Facebook page.Yeah.

Ghonim: Yeah, a lot of the people would have been criticizing the person. Once you personalize the idea, it’s much more vulnerable to attacks and to be discredited, “Oh, this person is looking for credit”, “Oh, I question his intention”, “Oh, he must have political agenda”, but the beauty of the Facebook page was that the anonymity added a lot of value. It added a lot of credibility.

Werman: Let me ask you something about former UN weapons inspector Mohamed ElBaradei. You set up the Facebook page for Mr.ElBaradei, whom you embraced as a possible leader in Egyptian presidential elections. Now, ElBaradei is very concerned about the direction Egypt is taking. He’s afraid that the Muslim Brotherhood will like having it’s parliamentary majority so much and will like having the opportunity to shape the new constitution, that they’ll strike a deal with the military to let them do as they please. What do you think is going to happen? Where is Egypt headed?

Ghonim: I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think we should believe in the Democratic process and I do believe that anyone who comes in through the voting of people should lead the country, yet it’s very important to make sure that our demands are clear. We want a country that is free and democratic completely, without any exceptional cases for any institution. We cannot tell Egyptian people, “You have to choose between Democracy and stability.” We have to make sure that Egypt is going to go in the right direction as a complete Democracy. This is why we are calling for a Presidential Election to happen because this is when you would say complete a power transfer happens and whom ever the candidate that wins this election, we will have to work with because this is the choice of the Egyptian people.

Werman: You spent some time in the US when you were younger, you married an American woman, you now work for an American company. At the same time, you write angrily in your book about Mubarak’s Police Day which was supported by the US with vast amounts of money over the years. How do you feel about the US?

Ghonim: Well, I like to differentiate between the US government and it’s policies and the American people. So when it comes to the government, I think, as Arabs, not just as Egyptians, we are fairly disappointed with the way the US is dealing with Arab world. I really think that it was quite evident that the US and other countries in Europe deal with us based on interests only, even if it’s against the values of the American people, the values of the European people. You know, dictators need support, and this is what exactly we saw, by the way, in Egypt. This is what we saw in Tunisia. You really think that dictatorship is so strong and no one can defeat the dictator and the country is all under control, and all what it took was, you know, hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets in Tunisia and, you know, a few millions of people in Egypt to take to the streets for 18 days, but what gives them the ability to survive and continue is the support they get from outside, the support they also get from inside from people who have interests with the, you know, the continuity of the regime, and I think it’s very important now to ask ourselves whether it is good to keep supporting dictators or not. Most of the world’s problems happen because of dictators who don’t represent the will of their people.

Werman: Wael Ghonim was the administrator of the “We are all Khalid Saeed” Facebook page that helped drive Egypt’s revolution last January. His new book is “Revolution 2.0 : The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power”. Wael, thank you very much. Great to meet you.

Ghonim: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Telecoms mogul and Coptic Christian Naguib Sawiris re-posted the images on Twitter last June.

The tweeted images showed Mickey Mouse wearing a traditional Islamic robe with a full beard, while Minnie Mouse is wearing a niqab – a full-face veil – with just her eyes showing.

Sawiris subsequently apologized on twitter (see below), saying he meant no offense but a formal complaint against him has now been referred to court.

I apologise for any who don’t take this as a joke , I just thought it was a funny picture no disrespect meant! Assef!!

— Naguib Sawiris (@NaguibSawiris) June 24, 2011

Tensions between Egypt’s Muslims and minority Christian community have worsened in recent months.

Anchor Marco Werman talks with correspondent Noel King in Cairo.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: In the uncertain cultural terrain of post-revolution Arab nations, a tweet can land you in deep trouble. A prominent Egyptian media mogul found that out the hard way. Naguib Sawiris tweeted a picture of Minnie and Mickey Mouse last June, but it wasn’t just any picture of the two Disney characters. Minnie is wearing a face veil, and Mickey sports a beard and traditional Islamic robe. And the mogul behind the tweet? Naguib Sawiris is a Christian. Egyptian authorities have charged Sawiris with contempt for religion. He is due to appear in court this Saturday. Correspondent Noel King is in Cairo. Noel, describe these Mickey and Minnie pictures for us.

Noel King: Well, they’ve been described as a cartoon, but if you see the image online you’ll see that they almost look like a painting with a little bit of a cartoonish aspect. Mickey Mouse is wearing Islamic robes and he has a long beard, and Minnie Mouse is wearing an niqab, the black face veil. And you can tell that it’s Minnie Mouse because she’s wearing the pink bow that we all know so well from the Disney character.

Werman: We’ll have a link to the pictures at theworld.org. I’ve got to say that Mickey Mouse with blue eyes seems unconventional, but the rest of him looks like Mickey as a Madrasah student, perhaps. These pictures were already out there online, Noel, and who knows where else. How are Caireans reacting to this? Because Sawiris is getting charged and getting tried for tweeting something that was already out there on the web.

King: That’s right, and that’s been one of his main defenses from the beginning, since he tweeted out the picture in June. Look, the cartooon has been out since 2008; it was out there; I thought it was funny. It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. It was supposed to be a joke. But when he tweeted the picture, a couple of prominent Islamists picked up on the tweet and they said to their followers, we’re going to boycott this man’s business. He’s a very wealthy man. He’s got his fingers in every pie from construction to tourism to science and technology. But the biggest hit that he took was with his mobile phone company. The numbers that we have seen so far suggest that about three hundred thousand subscribers ditched his company Mobinil and went to other companies as a way of expressing their outrage. So he did take a pretty big hit in his business. His stocks did fall. That said, three hundred thousand people out of an estimated maybe 55 to 60 million cell phone users isn’t an overwhelming number, but there is some displeasure there.

Werman: Sawiris is a Christian, as we’ve mentioned, and Christians are a minority in Egypt and there have been attacks on Christians since the ousting of Mubarak last year. Did Sawiris have another agenda by tweeting this image or was it just a case of poor judgment?

King: There are two things here. It was likely a case of poor judgment, of a joke gone wrong. At the same time, Sawiris has clashed for years and years with Islamists in Egypt. He’s a very outspoken critic of anything that to him smacks of religious conservatism. He has said in the press and publicly again and again that he despises the idea of Egypt moving toward a conservative religious society. So this is a man who, in a sense, has been a flash point for many years now.

Werman: Are Egyptians saying this is a sign that the country is moving toward a more conservative society?

King: If you ask me, Marco, that’s really the whole story here. Here’s what’s happening. Egypt Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the more conservative Salafi parties are doing very well, as we all know, in the parliamentary elections. Egyptian liberals, Christians, and secularists have said for the past couple of weeks, this is something to really be concerned about. This country is moving in the wrong direction. Their critics, including many ordinary Egyptians have said: Look, Egypt is not Iran. The Muslim Brotherhood are not mullahs, they’re dentists; they’re businessmen. They’re not going to change Egypt in any great way. What the liberals and Christians and secularists are pointing to since Monday is, they’re effectively saying this is the writing on the wall. If you want an example of how this country is moving in the wrong direction, look to this, the fact that a prominent businessman made a joke and now is being hauled into court. So for many people here in Egypt, this is a disturbing sign that things are moving in a conservative direction.

Werman: Correspondent Noel King in Cairo. Thank you, indeed.

King: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

In the ensuing chaos, more than a dozen people died. But they weren’t the only casualties.

Egypt’s Scientific Institute, formed in 1798 by Napoleon Bonaparte, was burned and thousands of rare books were destroyed.

In the basement of the Egyptian National Library, a remarkable rescue effort is underway. Teams of researchers, book restorers and volunteers are attempting to save 193,000 rare manuscripts, books and scientific journals.

The books are in a sad state. Burned by fire and then drenched when desperate firefighters tried to extinguish the flames.

Magdi Montassir is vacuuming-packing the wet books. He gently places each book into a plastic bag, then puts the book into a machine that looks a little like a photocopier.

He closes the lid, turns a dial and the bag fills up with air. Then, every bit of air is pushed out with a sharp whoosh.

“The machine sealing the bag,” Montassir says. “Empty oxygen, nitrogen, okay? Now, close the machine. Now the machine work. Look. And now it gives oxygen and becomes empty. No oxygen, no grow of bacteria or no fungi.”

The vacuum-packed books are stacked haphazardly in a basement hallway. The sight of thousands of rare volumes cascading in piles in a dimly-lit hallway is shocking.
But there’s just no other place for them.

Up on the roof of the Egyptian National Archives, even more books are drying out in the sun. They’re lying on sheets of newspaper, held down by stones.

The fastest and easiest way to dry them is simply take them up to the roof of the building and let the Egyptian sun beat down on them.

Back downstairs, a young man in a white lab coat is slumped at a table aiming a neon blue hair dryer at a damp scientific journal.

Behind him is the crown jewel of Egypt’s collection: an original copy of the Description D’Egypt, a description of Egyptian customs, art, culture and history that dates back to Napoleon’s 1798 campaign.

The pages are burnt at the edges. Otherwise, the book is in decent shape.

The books are from the Institut D’Egypt, or Egypt’s Scientific Institute. The building was a national treasure that most Egyptians didn’t even know existed.
With no government funding and no digitization of the volumes, historians describe it as a sleepy library that attracted researchers with lots of time and patience on their hands.

Whoever started the fire during the height of clashes between Egyptian protesters and security forces in December, probably didn’t even know what he was destroying.

“We are a cultured people,” says Zain El Din Mohammed Abdel Hati, chairman of the Egyptian National Library.

He’s furious with the protesters who burned the Institute.

“I think who did this is the enemy of the Egyptian culture. In this moment, we have a lot of enemies,” he says.

Abdel Hati has spent a good portion of the library’s budget on the recovery effort. He is running out of money. And the rescuers are tired. Their nerves are frayed. Many of them are heartbroken about the loss.

Researcher Mohammed Hassan kneels in a basement room where fans have been turned on full-blast to help dry the books. The fans are pointed up at the ceiling to avoid disturbing the ashes and loose pages -all that is left of many books.

He is gently sifting burnt pages with a gloved hand.

Hassan won’t throw away anything though – not even the charred scraps.

Hassan: “Little, little, little paper. I keep it here,” Hassan says.

Ruxandra Guidi: “It’s impossible to tell which books those scraps of paper come from.”

Hassan: “Yes.”

GR: “So, why save them?”

Hassan: “I need somebody who is specialist in these cases to tell me to throw it away. OK, I will throw. But until now, I must keep it safe.”

Until the experts can decide which books can be saved and which can’t, volunteers will continue working for hours at a stretch – with hair dryers and shrink wrap machines – trying to salvage history, one page at a time.

Syrian protesters in Homs set up night camps in the main square.

Amateur video appears to show hundreds of protesters clashing with Syrian forces on the streets in the Damascus suburb of Douma.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is “The World”. Syrians once again took to the streets today. Syria’s state news agency reported that massive crowds rallied in support of the government, but other news reports say the vast majority of the protestors out today, tens of thousands, were against the regime of Bashar al-Assad and, in spite of the presence of the Arab League monitors, activists say government forces killed some three dozen people. Borzou Daragahi is a Middle East correspondent for The Financial Times. He’s based in Cairo. He says demonstrators jammed city streets all over Syria.

Borzou Daragahi: We know that there was sounds of gunfire in Dumar as well as numerous other cities. There was really horrendous video footage of a protest in Kamishli, which is the Kurdish part of Syria, where the security forces appear to be opening fire on a group of unarmed demonstrators and you could see one of the protestors kind of dropping and being wounded and the other protestors trying to save him, footage of people being hauled away by black-masked Shabiha militiamen from protests. So, you know, quite a dramatic day of political unrest in the country.

Werman: I mean since the Arab League monitors arrived to put a check on the violence, we hear that a hundred and thirty people have been killed. Is it possible the violence has increased since their arrival?

Daragahi: I think it depends on what time frame you’re using, but I would say that the activity and the audacity of the protestors has increased since the arrival of the Arab League monitors, and that may be what is contribution to the uptake, an apparent uptake in the violence.

Werman: Now the man who heads the Arab League observers mission, a general Ahmed al-Dabi from Sudan, he issued a statement from the city of Homs earlier that said that the situation there was “reassuring” and that clashes had not been recorded, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, and also the general was considered a pretty controversial choice to head this mission. I’m wondering if you could tell us more about him.

Daragahi: Yeah, this is a gentleman who allegedly was in charge of creating a violent militia that was accused of perpetrating war crimes against the people of Darfur in Sudan some years ago. This is a guy who’s got a very, very, what some would call, a shady security security background and has been linked to figures who have been accused of gross human rights violations. So there’s some questions about the appropriateness of having a person of this background head a mission like this, but it almost seems like his comments triggered such a firestorm and were in such a stark contrast to the video footage and other witness accounts of what was happening in Homs at the time, that, you know, it has almost had the opposite effect, and the head of the Arab League has said that, you know, no comments attributed to any one member of the Arab League team in Syria are valid until the report is issued and a formal statement about the mission is made.

Werman: By permitting these Arab League observers to enter Syria and monitor the situation, what do you think Assad’s regime was expecting?

Daragahi: I’m not sure if they knew what they were expecting. Perhaps they thought that they would be able to mange the situation. This was not something that the regime wanted. They were sort of forced into a situation where it was either accept the Arab League initiative or be refereed to the UN Security Council, and once Russia appeared to be moving towards sort of sanctioning Syria at the UN Security Council. They probably figured it was better to have the Arab League coming in than to make this a UN Security Council issue.

Werman: By letting the Arab League monitors in, will it pay off any dividence for Bashar al-Assad by making him appear to be open to scrutiny? Is that how it’s working out do you think?

Daragahi: No, it doesn’t seem to be. You know, I think was encapsulated in a video footage that was uploaded to the internet yesterday that showed protestors and orange-vested Arab League monitors kind of running for their lives at a protest in the suburbs of Damascus as gunfire, presumably by the security forces, was erupting nearby. It’s showing the regime as kind of out of control and not able even to muzzle its guns when the Arab League officials are around. I don’t think it’s going to send a good message about the regime.

Werman: The Financial Time’s Borzou Daragahi. Thank you very much indeed.

Daragahi: It’s been a pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.