I can’t understand why. But maybe I shouldn’t be asking “why” but asking “how.” How are they so happy? How do have this joy that fill a room? Is there some kind of secret that I don’t know about? I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe the key to joy is not in what happens to us, but how we happen to life. Does that make sense? Not so much, right? Think of this: the most impoverished people are the happiest people. Tragedy hits everyone equally, it does not discriminate. In one way or another, you will face disasters in your lifetime. So maybe since heartbreak is a known factor in the equation of happiness, we need to change a different variable, which is our attitude.

Let’s paint two pictures. The first, a family that has a roof over their heads, food in the fridge, money in the bank. The second, a family that is struggling to find food, who lives in poverty, not a piaster to their name. These are very basic pictures, because as you know, each family faces many obstacles in their lifetime. Going more in-depth, we could factor in family issues, self-fulfillment, serious illness, death, mental diseases, tragedy, and the list can keep on going because this life is filled with the absolute best and absolute worst situations anyone could encounter. One minute you could be happy beyond belief, the next minute you could be completely devastated, through no fault of your own, but simply by living.

Recently, Copts have been forced to leave their homes in Arish because of the threats they face. 6 Copts have been killed by the Islamic State in Sinai. This is not the first incident to happen against the Copts, and not the first time for them to be forced out of their homes and community. However, I want to point out that this displacement in Sinai is not only from terrorism. It's also as a result of authorities agreeing with the general public that forced displacement in Upper Egypt is appropriate. Forced displacement of the Copts is not just an isolated incident, it is something that happens often when Muslim people want to force their rules on others including the law and the legislation. This serious situation, as I mentioned and written many times earlier, will not be solved by security measures only, it needs more efforts than that. As long as our children keep getting the same education in schools and mosques, calling for Muslim kids to hate others because they are "infidels" we will continually be dealing with these types of incidents in Egypt all the time, and in alot of places. When you plant seeds in chilren to hate others becuase they are Christian, don't except to have angels when these children finally become adults. Unfortunately, Sisi is still running Egypt with the same old rules and same old approach. The president still hasn't recognized that Egypt is in need of a new and creative approach that not only comes through security measures. In conclusion, I want to call for the Pope and for all Christians to pay attention to their brothers and sisters who have become displaced lately, and to do their best to help, where possible, in this horrbile situation.

Lately, the US dollar had declined by 3 Egyptian Pounds, which lead everyone to believe that the government was right when it made the deceison of floating the Egyptian Pound against the US dollar. But we need to ask this question before becoming optimistic or pessimistic: is this decline real? Will this decline continue? And, what does it mean? From my opinion, the decline of the US dollar is not real and it will not last more than 3 to 4 months maximum, and the reason I say this is because nothing has changed in the Egyptian economy to improve the situation of the Egyptian Pound against the US Dollar. Let's take tourism for example. Egypt is still suffering from a lack of toursim and tourists who can bring and spend US dollars. By this way, Egypt can get more dollars than they need, consequentially, the Egyptian Pound will then gain more power to face the US dollar. In conclusion, I want to emphasize that I hope that this decline in the US dollar is real, however, I don't think this is real and I expect that in 3 to 4 months we will be talking again about the soar of the US dollar against the Egyptian pound. If we want the US dollar to have real decline against the Egyptian pound, we need to work hard to get more US Dollar through more exports or decrease our import and be self independent.

Every day in the morning we wake up very active and very hopeful. We start our day by taking breakfast, going to our work, chatting with our friends and back to home after long day of being exhausted, trying to relax and eat our supper together before time for sleeping come while watching TV. We are doing that every day, hoping and feeling that the future will be better and we believe that we will live longer to see our dreams coming true in front of our eyes. When we hear about accident here or there or when we know by chance that one we know have died, we try to feel sorry about him and say “God have Mercy on him “, God give patience to the family”, “we will all die”, also we might think little bit about repent and stop doing the bad things we were doing for a while.

After seven years of being absent from the African cup, the football team could be in the final against all the speculations that claimed that the Egyptian team will be out from the beginning of the championship. In fact, some of these speculations came from experts in football and previous coaches like “Hassan Shehata”, who was saying that Mr. Copper, is not qualified enough to train the Egyptian team, however, this coach reached the final until now.

After Trump decision of banning people from Seven Muslim country from entering the united statess, The media in the west sarted to talk about the Islamophobia started. Unfortunately, the western media and the eastern media talk about Islamophobia because of Trump decesion and no one talk about Chrsitian-phobia in the east. Muslims talk about human rights and freedom when it comes to their freedom and their rights but never talk about other people rights. I haven't heard any media in the east calling for demonstration against what happened to christian in Iraq, Lybia, Syria and even Egypt.

In the last few months, president Sisi took many measurements that showed without a doubt, that he failed in managing many internal issues. I remember when the 25th of January revolution sparked, one of its demands was "the bread" and now Egyptians can hardly make a living. Sisi's policies made most Egyptians more poor and more desprate. Sisi failed in providing fair priced medicine to Egyptians, now prices are more than most can afford. Sisi failed in keeping the Egyptian Pound strong and float the Egyptian Pound which led the Egyptian pound to lose 120% percent of its value.

Nowadays it seems like everyone is getting to the list of “terrorists” or “conspirers” or “a general threat” The most recent is Abu Trekka. Whether the convictions are true or not, is not my point. If it is true, wow, that’s terrible. If not true, well, it’s equally is terrible from the Government. More and more we are hearing messages from the Government condemning people for doing these “unacceptable” acts against the country. I don’t mean to say it’s not serious if Abu Trekka was actually funding the Muslim Brotherhood or not. If he was actually doing that, then shame on him, and what a disgrace!

I want to start off by wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas. I hope everyone can be with family and friends, and really take time to relax and be thankful among those most important to you. When I think about the birth of our Lord, I can’t help but wonder how far, us, as Christians, have wandered from the example Jesus set for us. The most glorious Being, the King of Kings, our Saviour, was born in a manger. How many times do we hear this same story, and yet it continues to shock me. The One who is our Leader, in all ways, was born in a tiny bed lying on hay. Which, by the way is what cows eat for food, thrown onto the ground left for animals to step on.

I want to congratulate all our readers with the new year. Wishing to be better than the previous year which was full of bad news everywhere in the world. I know that many people may be negative and say that we say the same thing every year. Also might say that every time we wish the next year to be better but it never become better. I want to tell those who think in this way that asl ong as you still have chance to live for the next year, its very good and amazing news. Look around yourself especially with what is happening around the world now days, you should be thankful that you still have chance to improve your life and make it better.

I have recently watched an interview of Dr. Abd El-Moneem Saeed on CBC Tv. He was trying to analyst Egyptian diplomacy, especially since after Egypt voted for the Russian and French resolution at the UN at the same time. Saeed tried to understand and interpret the confusion of Egyptian diplomacy by claiming that Egypt is lacking a strategy to deal with international issues. With my respect to Dr. Saeed, I completely differ with what he was trying to say, as I don’t think that the confusion in Egyptian diplomacy is because of a lacking strategy. I totally believe that you can’t have an independent diplomacy without being independent in your decisions.

Egyptians have been asking the same question for a long time now. This question is: why can't the lower class feel or see any improvements despite the economic reform that all governments have been proclaiming to adopt to improve poverty and the middle class. I can assure you, that Egyptians will never feel any imporvement either short term or long term if economic reforms are not adopted, and fair tax systems not imposed. It is widely known that the exact same taxes are collected from rich people, as they are collected from the poor and middle classes. However, this should not be the same percentage, because it is only making the poor more poor, and the middle class move towards being poor as well. Having said that, we can see that the Egyptian tax system is now based on an unfair tax system. We can see that the most heavily taxed people are the government employees and the public sector employees as well. At the same time, we can see that the richest people pay the same percentage as the poor people. Furthermore, they try to create their own ways to escape and report unreal facts about their profits so they can pay less taxes. In conclusion, I want to advise that the only way the government will see a real change in Egyptian life, they will have to adopt a different approach to the their tax system.

The terrorism attack that happened recently against the Church of St. Peter, located inside the Coptic Cathedral shows us, that without a doubt, the Copts have a history, and are a living history, of sacrifice. Martyrdom is something the Coptic people have gotten used to since the time Islam invaded Egypt. Before that, it was the Roman Empire who considered Christians as rebels. This terrorism attack not only shows the teachings of hatred in schools and mosques, and how it leads to disasters such as these tragedies, but also shows that unless Egypt takes serious steps to eliminate these insulting teachings towards other religions we will continue down this road. This attack aslso shows how the police is so careless about protecting the rights and freedoms any Egyptian Christian should be able to practice.

I have talked many times about the culture of hatred that Egyptians have. I don't believe that Egyptians are peaceful people, contrary to what the media is trying to proclaim. There are many things that have happened in the last 2 decades that has made Egyptians very violent and hatefull of everything.

The U.S. has come out with a report listing the safest Middle Eastern countries to visit for tourists. Among this list were Jordan, UAE, and our very own Egypt. What I want to focus on is this fog that is floating around Egypt clouding everyone from the downturn the country is actually encountering.

Before June 30th 2013, all political parties was trying to prove that they are existing and their voice was so loud in criticising and commenting in every event, however, after June 30th, I barely can hear their voice in the political life. There are many factors explain why the political parties are silent but these factors cannot be a reason to continue silent. One of these factors that the political parties don’t have the tools to make any real change as most of the parties are week and suffer from internal dispute. Some other factors related to the president Sisi himself, as they consider him the saviour after he could get rid of the Muslims Brotherhood and they believe that they can’t be opponent to the person who did this favor for them.

There are many things in life are basic needs and you can’t compromise them. Water, Electricity, and Medication are things we can’t tell any person to wait for long time until we solve the issues related to these basic things. We can’t ask any children he wants go to school to wait until the water come to wash his face and brush his teeth, otherwise, he will never go to school. The same for Medication, we can’t tell elder people to wait because the medicine they want is not available, otherwise, they will die before getting this medicine. I can’t imagine that Egypt with all their potential can’t solve simple issues like providing people with water, Medication and the same with Electricity.

In an unprecedented step the Central Bank of Egypt decided to float the Egyptian pound yesterday. This step lead the US Dollar reach about 15 Egyptian pound and more. The question we need to ask after this step Is it the right time to this step? From my simple knowledge, I can say that this decision has pros and cons; however, I need to explain some facts before ending up with conclusion. The first fact we need to know that Egypt imports more than exports. The second fact, Tourism industry suffer from long time and until the present time which is the main source of the foreign currency after the Suez canal. The third fact, the security and instability in Egypt is so high because of the political was between the current regime and Muslims Brotherhood.

It seems the crisis between Egypt and Suadi Arabia will not end soon especially after the last statement from the saudi diplomate who made fun of Sisi when he was talking about his freidge. This was not the first crisis to happen between Egypt and Saudi arabia Lately. In the same month another crisis happened when Egypt vote with the russian resolution which made Saudi Arabia angry becuase of that. The main problem of Saudi Arabia that they want Egypt to follow them as subordinate, however, Egypt will never be subordinate to Saudi Arabia but they are insiisting to deal with Egypt in that way.

Recently, youth leaders and ambassadors in Egypt had the pleasure of meeting with Sisi for a conference in Sharm El Sheikh. Topics of discussion included imprisoned youth under the Sisi administration, poverty and the looming threat of yet another revolution that seems closer than comfortable. Social media has been exploding with the idea of another revolution soon to materialize. My questions is, was this conference an attempt for Sisi to try to salvage the image he has with the youth? Does he actually care about the concerns that were brought up during the conference? Furthermore, with this so-called mass protest less than two weeks away, was this just a monumental waste of time since the protests are still going to happen anyways, with the leaders all being the youth of Egypt?