CODEPINK has glommed onto the Egypt protests. The group's leader Medea Benjamin is in Cairo where she has posed for photos the group has posted to their flickr page. She has also made herself available for interviews with U.S. media, as indicated in the current headline on their blog. (Has anyone taken her up on this offer?)
Medea Benjamin with Cairo demonstrators
read more here: CODEPINK�:�CODEPINK Peace Activists Join Egyptians on the Ground in Cairo, Available for Phone Calls, Interviews
By the way, the photo below was posted to the CODEPINK flickr page. If there are any Arabic-speaking readers out there who can translate the sign and identify the statue, I'd appreciate it. (Post translation to comments.)
UPDATE:
Turns out that CODEPINK's mission was to -- wait for it -- deliver flowers to the protesters. (Read here.) I suspect that this delivery was to be photographed and publicized. According to Benjamin, their mission was thwarted when the taxi in which they were travelling toward Tahrir Square was stopped by angry pro-Mubarak forces armed with guns. The pro-Mubarak people entered the taxi at gunpoint, confiscated passports and held them for some tense period of time. Eventually Benjamin and friends were freed with the intercession of a protester who had trained at Fort Eustis in Virginia and had pro-American sentiments. Upon their release, the taxi driver said to them "No flowers. Hotel." and drove them back from whence they came. No doubt, he didn't want to lose his life bringing daisies to Tahrir Square.
CODEPINK now brings frivolous, pointless gestures to important political events internationally.
4 comments:
The statue is of the great Jewish sage
Moses Maimonides 12th century whose
family fled from Spain and settled in
Egypt, he later became physician to
Saladin the Great. Maimonides was and
is revered by the righteous of the three monotheistic faiths.
Rochelle Owens
Rochelle:
That's interesting. I had no idea that there was a statue of Maimonides in Cairo. (I'll try to research it and follow up with some information on it.) I wonder what the sign and graffiti say.
Adam,
I circulated your question regarding the statue.
The top sign, with the Star of David in it, says, “Get out Mubarak.”
The sign carried by the protestors says, “Get out pig.”
It is not so clear what is the graffiti at the base of the statue, “…for the sake of the martyrs” ; “…ever…”
That’s it.
Thanks, Dvar Dea. The star seems consistent with those anti-Mubarak signs linking him to Jews or Israel. By the way, I haven't been able to locate the statue or verify that it's Maimonides. (It certainly does look a great deal like the Cordoba statue of Maimonides.)
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