One Arab World

I address this very short letter to you and to all the honorable and free people in the world, to all the representatives of the free people and those whose consciences refuse oppression, injustice, false accusations and merciless murder.

My letter is very short due to the circumstances out of my control restricting my freedom and depriving me of my human rights, the foremost of which is the right to write, express and reject the injustice and suffering I am subjected to!!

The day my freedom was taken away in January 2005, your great efforts -after God and combined with the efforts of my supporters- played a crucial role in my release. The first faces I saw -an honor to me- were the faces of a delegation of European male and female parliament representatives. Your visit to me during my imprisonment is not only reason for breaking the doors of this prison and my temporary release, it also gave me the possibility of exercising my right in running for the first presidential election. I was imprisoned to prevent me from running for the election in January 2005. With God's grace and the enthusiasm of the reformists I was able to come in second to the president and be the only competitor to him and his son despite the rigging and all forms of injustice, defamation and changing the results. I also paid an extra price when my constituency's election results were rigged thus causing me to lose my permanent seat in the parliament due to blatant rigging. Some of you were in Cairo and witnessed a part of the tragedy.

Today I pay a new and high price as punishment for having run for the presidential election. I am also being prevented from continuing the democratic reform path in Egypt so that the current regime can strengthen its presence by claiming there is no alternative for it other than fundamentalism and terrorism, thus forcing people inside and outside Egypt to accept its presence.

Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, I do not pay this price alone. My children, family, party, my whole generation and all the reformists in this country pay the price, too. I lost my freedom, my work as a lawyer, journalist and chairman of the first and only civil political party to be established in a quarter of a century, the duration of Mubarak's rule. I am threatened of remaining in prison for five years and prevented from exercising my political rights for another five years to guarantee that Egypt is inherited by Mubarak's son, as well as making me an example to anyone who thinks of breaking the power monopoly not only in Egypt but in the Arab world!!

I call upon you to exert every effort to defend my fair case not for my sake, nor for the sake of my children or my party that is being destroyed, my human rights which are violated in this prison every morning, or my life which illness, injustice and oppression are eating away at. I ask you to defend my fair case to keep hope alive for the coming generations which we do not want to lose hope. It is for these generations that I call upon you to exert every effort to defend my fair case and to visit me in prison to witness the truth which the Egyptian regime is very good at concealing and telling lies to prove the opposite. Free people of the world. I am dying alone for a principle, for my country and for freedom.

Please raise my voice before my spirit departs this world.

- Ayman Nour

Help get this out and sign this. Also check this and this out.

- Karim Elsahy

10% can go a long way. We want to make it go even further.

As the next step towards what it is we want to accomplish here at One Arab World we are founding an “Act Tank” in Cairo. In an obvious sense of the term this Act Tank will act as both a think tank and a grass roots activism organization combined. We are going to first determine the problems we face, figure the most effective way to counter the problem; how best to approach a solution within the means we have, then actually go out and implement; hands dirty.

One of the companies I founded and chair has graciously agreed to direct 10% of all its net proceeds towards our Act Tank.

We’ve got several projects on our roster ; each person on our committee (5) has a baby. Here is mine.

I am one of few that believe that Egypt’s largest problems aren’t governmentally related; not even religious. In one of our debates here the question of Islamic reformation was met by a very interesting reply. “It is not Islam that needs reformation, it is Muslims that need reformation.”

I found that very interesting and I took it and applied it to our other notorious sectors. Politics, business, development…ect.

How far we can get on what we have is more important than how much more we can get.

So here it is.

I believe that one of, not Egypt’s, but Egyptians worst setbacks is a phenomenal increase in intolerance. I am fairly young but I am certainly old enough to see that phenomena grow. Christians, the white man in general, Shia/Sunni, gulf Arabs,…..ect. and of course… The Jew.

It’s bad for morality, business, and growth and it’s got to end. Here is what we are going to do; and as with any good plan it is simple as hell.

Analysis; It is easy to demonize something or someone you’ve never met (There are reportedly 38 Egyptian Jews left in Egypt and while I cant back this up with real statistics I would bet my life that not more than 1% of Egyptians have ever actually met a Jew). Solution; Met some Jews.

Implementation;

Step One, “Meet your Cousin”: Fly some Jews in from around the world (maybe five or six), hold a two day conference at a university, pack the hall with a bunch of curious Egyptian students, have the guests tell everyone about their lives, what they do, their political inclinations, their families, their beliefs, and so on, Q&A then refreshments.

I just got off the phone with a good friend of mine that was on my Thesis Committee (A 75 Year Urban City Plan for Jerusalem). He is the Rabbi of the third oldest congregation in America. He liked the idea a lot and is not only willing to help but thinking of coming himself. If anyone else would like to come or help shoot me an email.

Step Two, “The Pioneer Program”: Following in the footsteps of a very courageous idea, we are going to begin funding the temporary swap of Arab and Israeli bloggers… Let me explain. Rabbi Belzer is the founder and vp of an organization in Ireland that brings Palestinians and Israelis together to develop understanding… a beautiful objective.

This is like that on steroids. We are going to send Arab bloggers to Israel and Israeli bloggers to Arab countries to blog. When you do that you don’t just send the blogger ; you send his or her entire readership. Same amount of money, much bigger impact. I think we can fund a trip a month once we get started.

We are aiming to start before the end of the year (founding a NGO in Egypt is a ton of fun) but if you are interested start emailing us. For the bloggers thing we are going to be looking very heavily at stats.

If we don’t make an effort we are going to keep tightening the constraints on what it means to be us till there is no one left but you and your brother… not even your cousin.

I do have a couple in mind already though ;)

- Karim Elsahy

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Im not one to relish in this, I’m even against the death penalty but….

Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

- Karim Elsahy

Ok, we’ve ironed out the trip to a slightly more acceptable form and it has got to be the dumbest route I’ve ever heard of. Please feel free to criticize and any alternative suggestions would be great.

We are going to post from each of these points. We are going to link to backgrounds of the city, post pictures of both the city and the route there, set up interviews with everyone from politicians to the average Joe (or Ahmed) and maybe give an opinion or two.

1: Start point, Alexandria, Egypt

2: Mars Matrouh, Egypt (Closest real Egyptian city to the Libyan Border)

3: Egyptian – Libyan Border: We are still working on the paper work but it seems to  be going smoothly.  Any help would still be appreciated though.

4:Banghazi, Libya

4-5:Optional stop en route to Tripoli (We’ve got a few of these depending on how interesting things seem)

5: Tripoli, Libya

6: Libyan – Tunisian Border

7: 2-3 optional stops en route to Tunis

8: Carthage ruins, Tunisia

9: Tunisian – Algerian Border (here is where it starts to get a little freaky; we read unpleasant things about disappearing tourists)

10: Algiers, Algeria

11: Oran, Algeria (and this is where the route gets stupid;  see Algeria and Morocco are a bit cross with one another over a little misunderstanding called Western Sahara and hence have no relations and the borders are closed. In the most simplistic of solutions we are going to ferry to Spain from Oran then back to Morocco, because Morocco is not to be missed of course, then back to Spain and onward… yes you read right.)

12 - 13: Via ferry we get to Alicante, Spain then on to Almeria, Spain for another 10 hour ferry back to Africa; Melilla, Morocco to be exact (actually I think it may be Spanish territory…we’ll find out.)

14: Fes, Morocco

15: Marrakech, Morocco

16: Safi, Morocco (option)

17: Casablanca, Morocco

18: Rabat, Morocco

19: Tangier, Morocco to Tarifa, Spain via ferry

20: The Andalusia leg of the trip starting with Seville, Spain

21: Cordoba, Spain

22: Granada, Spain (after this we pick up the pace. We’ve seen Western Europe and it gets real expensive from here on so we drive like hell to Eastern Europe. As far as the blog is concerned this is the end of the trip anyway)

23:Barcelona, Spain

24: Turin, Italy

25 – 35ish: Eastern Europe to Greece

Ship car from Greece and fly home.

Trip time: 5-6 weeks. Start date: First week of September 2006. Transportation: 01 Jeep Cherokee, 80,000 km. Protection: Mace, baseball bat, and I vetoed Tamers idea to bring an electric shock on the bases that the boarders are tough enough as is.  Gear: Mini DV cam, Professional Digital Camera, two laptops with extra batteries, satellite phone,  nav system, and 5000+ play list (Napster to Go). Desert experience: spent some time with some bedwen in Sinai and watched a discovery channel special; but we got a lot of heart baby.

I’ve been getting a lot of emails with important things not to miss and some great hook ups from places to crash to interview setups to paperwork setups and it is much appreciated… keep em coming. We are also getting some sponsorship for the trip.

-          Karim Elsahy