Translate

Saturday 10 October 2009

Egyptian blinkers

A few stories from the land of the Pharaohs:

Firstly, a little bit of hypocrisy by Egypt's Culture Minister Farouk's Hosny, who failed last month to become head of Unesco - the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - when the post went to Bulgarian Irina Bokova.

Mr Hosny has accused the UN of 'politicising' the election which he said he lost because of "Zionist pressures" (you have got to laugh), but the reality was that last year Mr Hosny said he would burn "Israeli books in Egyptian libraries". A minister for 22 years, he has refused to visit Israel and although there are no written laws to stop writers from travelling to Israel to promote their books, those who have tried have been castigated - even ostracised - by Egyptian society.

Despite the fact that technically Israel and Egypt are at peace, the al-Ahram Media Group, the largest such group in Egypt, has voted to boycott Israel. The group's journalists are no longer allowed to interview Israelis, while the organisation refuses invitations to events where Israelis are participating.

What sort of UNESCO was Mr Hosny planning to run .... one without the Jewish writers, and scientists etc?

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments are welcomed, or even just thanks if you enjoyed the post. But please make any comment relevant to the post it appears under. Off topic comments will be blocked or removed.

Moderation is on for older posts to stop spamming and comments that are off topic or inappropriate from being posted .... comments are reviewed within 48 hours. I don't block normal comments that are on topic and not inappropriate. Vexatious comments that may cause upset to other commentators, or that are attempting to espouse a particular wider political view, are reviewed before acceptance. But a certain amount of debate around a post topic is accepted, as long as it remains generally on topic and is not an attempt to become sounding board for some other cause.

Final decision on all comments is held by the blog author and is final.

Comments are always monitored for bad or abusive language, and or illegal statements i.e. overtly racist or sexist content. Spam is not tolerated and is removed.

Commentaires ne sont surveillés que pour le mauvais ou abusif langue ou déclarations illégales ie contenu ouvertement raciste ou sexiste. Spam ne est pas toléré et est éliminé.

Followers

Blog Archive

Its a Pucking World

Its a Pucking World
Dreamberry Wine Cover

About Me

My photo
A middle aged orange male ... So 'un' PC it's not true....