Layers of Lies marching in semblance
of an ugly and distorted “reality”
Lives wasted in transience
in false hopes of evidential existentiality
In fear of facing internal emptiness
they blind themselves to possibilities of … humanity
I suspected the Nepomuk might be the culprit and I was right. I stopped it by running
qdbus org.kde.NepomukServer /nepomukserver quit
I then wiped out its data by running
rm -r .kde/share/apps/nepomuk/
Finally I got it started again by runing
nepomukserver
…and my problems were solved.
Trying to search for a solution to this problem, I found people suggesting that one would wipe the ~/.kde folder and start afresh. That sounded too drastic and a great deal of my customizations would have been lost in the process.
In Egypt we had a pretty nasty form of structural violence that was embodied in the state’s massive bureaucracy, and web of interests that surround it. It was nasty, inefficient, and very corrupt. The revolution attempted to call for end to that violence and was still taking baby steps in trying to find a more human replacement. The magical eighteen days in Tahrir in early 2011 saw a wonderful experiment where people were trying to create a new reality and a new order, they were trying out new ways of dealing with others…gentler and sweeter ways.
Before anything they were attempting came to fruition, they were faced with cultural violence by Islamists. The Islamists claimed divine authority and were naturally bent on extinguishing all experimentation as they viewed them as silly and futile. They had their perfect ways and had no need for those where reaching out for something nobler…yet without history laden labels or structures of power. The Islamists attempted assimilate the machinery of structural violence in their arsenal of cultural warfare.
As soon as the horrors of their designs became clear to the vast majority of Egyptian, a revolt ensued. Tragically, since June 30th, 2013 no alternative means were found to supplant either forms oppression. One thing is patently clear, most Egyptians would opt for the familiar and impersonal structural violence that they had suffered for decades, than to give a chance for Islamist cultural violence to run its course…democratic process be damned.
The gods they make capture their fears, their ignorance, and their desire to control.
Their gods share their grotesque outlook, yet they fully capture their aspirations.
Aspirations of dominance, control, and subjugation of others.
Aspirations of meek and mean-spirited human “beings”.
The wretches are blind to human potential!
I will be voting “yes” on the next constitutional referendum. It will be a vote with limited enthusiasm and excitement. It comes about from a painful analysis of the sorry state Egypt is now in. My aspirations for a post revolutionary Egypt remain much higher.
My concern is that the alternative to a positive outcome of the referendum are a great deal more grim. The way I see it, we have three options on the menu:
1. A very hard-core Islamist constitution that will be regressive and anachronistic if the MB or their ilk rise again to power…a “no” will make that more probable.
2. The 2012 constitution which already included military trials (the most abhorrent part in the new constitution), but missing out on many of the good points with regards to freedom of belief and minority rights in the proposed constitution
3. The 1972 constitution which gives the president completely unchecked powers. i.e. full regression to the pre 2011 state.
Escaping the sad fate of 1 makes 2 or 3 (or some mix of the two) very likely . I do not see a fourth option. The revolutionary idealists never managed to organize themselves politically over the last 3 years. Beyond making moral statements, and standing for what they believe is right, their sacrifices have been well exploited by many parasites.
The proposed constitution is still a small victory for the civil and progressive camp. A beach head, that I hope they will be able to expand upon later. The alternative is to risk domination by the Islamists, in which case society will come to complete stasis and no progress will be possible except via an all out civil war. Although the military will continue to play an active role in Egyptian politics in the coming years, with some hard work and a bit of luck we might be able to gradually contain and limit their influence. With the Islamists our chances of doing that is zero.
You fall! You hit the water at high speed. Wet! Shocked! Refreshed! Disoriented!
You emerge! You quickly swim towards your board and get your sail up again.
You learn! The forces acting over you lead to an imbalance. Your actions were not properly calculated.
You understand! Full control is a myth! The best you can do is make optimal use of the natural forces around to arrive to where to want to go.The direct path is often unfeasible. You can not fight the waves or wind head-on.
You read! The awesome forces that drive you forward and shape the planet; you body that is optimize through millennia for different purposes, but through will and determination you adapt it for totally different purposes.The power of the intellect is magnificent!
You realize! Harmony in flow, motion and action.
You think! You have achieved mastery…..you FALL again.
Taking a break on the approach to the summit, freezing winds howling fiercely, my youthful partner remarks “I am stressed!”. I shot back with some anger and exasperation “This is nothing! There are levels of stress you have yet to experience!”. My partner stares at me, his face ashen cold and with a pained expression asks “But what on earth could be more stressful than this?”. I answer “Watching a noble dream sublimate into nothingness… and digging deep for the will to live…and learning once more to hope again and to dream again”. We continue our accent…silently.
A few days ago, I was having a chat with a friend about how we often depict the motions of the planets following an anticlockwise rotation around the sun. We saw that it is a matter of arbitrary bias and perspective where north is often depicted as being in the direction of the topmost part of the map. Thus if you took spacecraft and flew above the north pool, and from a highly elevated vantage point looked down upon the solar system, you would see Earth, and the planets rotate in an anticlockwise direction. You would, however, perceive things in the opposite sense if you where to fly southward above the south pole and look down up our solar system.
Dr. Fathi brought to my attention such view of the world,where the north is at the topmost part of the map, is a but a rather recent development. The pioneering Arab cartographer, al-Idrisi depicted the south in the direction of the topmost part of his maps. In that view, upper-Egypt is indeed “higher” than lower Egypt, Europe is “below” northern Africa. I am very curious as when the flip to north being “up” can about and why?
al-Idrisi’s life is a complex and fascinating one. He compiled his major works while at the court of the Norman King, Roger II of Sicily.
The above is not written to justify any inhumanity towards the MB or Islamists in general, but to understand the root causes of such inhumanity. Such understanding is crucial if we are to move forward with creating a society that is free from animosity and vitriolic hatred.
I hope that one day I will live in a country where the rule of a law is applied with full impartiality, and where laws are put in place to protect the rights and freedoms of the citizenry, not some select elite. Be it military, religious, or otherwise.
In July 2013 the army, removed a democratically elected autocrat who did a pretty lousy job of running the country and also sought to impose his ideology on the Egyptian people. Now, as then, the army was responding to the will of the vast majority of Egyptians.
It is to be noted that this time the scale of demonstrations was several times larger than any experienced during January 25-February 11 2011.
We are grateful and proud of our army for the role that he played in both instances. We are well aware the sins of SCAF in the transitional period. We are happy that they seem to have learned from their past mistakes and are opting to stay away for power and have immediately handed power to the the head of supreme court as our constitution indicates in instances of impeachment. We are hopeful that they will continue to show wisdom and maturity in the coming days.
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| Cartoon by Ahmad Nady showing puny and vocal Morsi supporters attempt at terrorizing Egyptians |
To be clear, this is a popular impeachment of democratically elected president. The army here is the executor of the will of the Egyptian people. To call this a coup, is to gravely insult the millions who went out to the streets calling for Morsi to step down, braving countless terrorist threats by Islamists and putting their lives at risk to make their country a beacon on light and civilization in the region and not a breading ground for intolerance and terrorism.