CairoComix: Excavating the political

12 October 2015, Mada Masr By Jonathan Guyer “All comics are political,” wrote Allen Douglas and Fedwa Malti-Douglas in their seminal 1994 study Arab Comic Strips. But whether for children or adults, the forms of political expression in comics are never straightforward. Translated editions of Superman project cultural imperialism as well as the human need for heroes and villains. A comic advertising Stella beer

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Deaths without dignity

21 August 2013, Mada Masr By Sherief Gaber   “You want to see the bodies? Ok then, here!” the man working at the morgue said, holding me and a friend by the arm and practically pushing us into a humid room filled with bodies, lying on slabs or on the floor and in various states of decay. We had been

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Maspero and memory

09-10-2013, Mada Masr By Sherief Gaber   Two years ago today, just after sunset, the Egyptian army murdered 28 people in the span of perhaps fifteen minutes. Many were shot, several were run over by armored vehicles zigzagging up and down the Corniche, and all this took just fifteen minutes. Bodies were carried into the lobby of an apartment building,

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Imprisoned activist Alaa Abd El Fattah speaks from Tora

On prisons as sites of violations, extremism and boredom Friday, August 21, 2015 By Ahdaf Souief Alaa Abd El Fattah, outspoken software tecchie, blogger and political activist, has spoken to the media for the first time since he began serving his latest sentence at Tora Prison. Abd El Fattah is serving a five-year prison sentence for being at a civil gathering in

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On returning from Palestine

Omar Robert Hamilton 12 June 2015, Mada Masr At the border it is always the same questions. Do you have another name? Do you have another passport? What is your father’s name? What is his father’s name? Have you ever been to Syria? Lebanon? Morocco? What are you doing here? I used to feel sick for days before coming to

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The news website that’s keeping press freedom alive in Egypt

Mada Masr was formed just before military coup of 2013. Amid growing censorship, its staff have risked their lives to continue reporting. Can they stay true to their mission? Leslie T Chang Tuesday 27 January 2015 On the afternoon of 17 June 2013, a group of friends gathered in a fourth-floor apartment in downtown Cairo. They sat on the floor

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