An Egyptian army conscript walks up to 12-year-old Omar Salah Omran, who sells hot sweet potatoes on the street - outside the front gates of Cairo’s US Embassy, close to Tahrir Square - and requests two potatoes from the young street vendor.

From the outset of the revolution, we had dreamy romantic perceptions that it would move us forward. We perceived the rebels as being mature and consolidated, facing the dishonorable political power with bare chests. The situation was easy to describe and the fronts were clear; highly moral and brave rebels facing a tyrannical authority that was trying to eliminate them by arrest, injury and murder, using its security forces and hired thugs. Whenever a rebel was killed or injured by the treacherous authority, they became symbols that we celebrated.

From the outset of the revolution, we had dreamy romantic perceptions that it would move us forward. We perceived the rebels as being mature and consolidated, facing the dishonorable political power with bare chests. The situation was easy to describe and the fronts were clear; highly moral and brave rebels facing a tyrannical authority that was trying to eliminate them by arrest, injury and murder, using its security forces and hired thugs. Whenever a rebel was killed or injured by the treacherous authority, they became symbols that we celebrated.

At the beginning it was Ultras Ahlawy. On 27 January, a judge ordered the execution of 21 civilians in the Port Said football violence, in which at least 72 football fans were killed.

On a recent Friday, coppersmith Alaa Moussa parked himself in the same spot where two years earlier he had stood defiantly with a handwritten banner addressed to then president Hosni Mubarak

Mohamed Morsi is indeed full of surprises. Ever since Morsi took office, he has never ceased to present us Egyptians with surprising decisions that make us wonder how, why, and for what purpose these decisions were made in the first place.

The Arabic definition of feloul depends on the sentence, but basically covers an array of negative adjectives, including defeated, barren, broken or bankrupt.

The soundtracks of 007 movies 'Live and Let Die' and 'Skyfall' had been particularly useful in understanding the relations between Egypt's minister of defence General Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi and the Muslim Brothers’ President Morsi, which is significant to grasp the country’s deepening political and economic crisis.

Numbers can say a lot about the status achieved by Islamists on the second anniversary of the 25 January revolution.

The National Salvation Front (NSF) is the main entity encompassing opposition to the Islamists in Egypt. It often projects itself as a united and homogenous body

Some imagination is necessary to better deal with reality. So imagine Egypt without the Muslim Brotherhood; then imagine the political scene that would not only be void of the Brotherhood but of their critics as well.

Amidst the increasing violence on the Egyptian street and the uncertainty regarding the political transition process, the birth of the second Egyptian republic seems to be highly complicated.

Over the past few weeks, human rights groups recorded more than 20 cases of sexual assault and collective harassment against female protestors in Tahrir Square, which at times included stabbing victims with switchblades. Some victims are still in hospital in critical condition.

I believe the presence of armed gangs and the incidents of rape at the peripheries of Tahrir Square represent a serious problem. I do not just sympathize with the victims: women and revolutionaries who were, and still are, subjected to wide-scale suppression or abuse. I am concerned about two issues; the first of them is building a revolutionary party capable of maintaining a link with protest spaces.

There is a famous story that is probably more fiction than fact about how Military Intelligence in the 1960s was excessive in its censorship of the media, to the extent that it objected to publishing an article reporting a drop in the availability of canned sardines on the market.

There is a famous story that is probably more fiction than fact about how Military Intelligence in the 1960s was excessive in its censorship of the media, to the extent that it objected to publishing an article reporting a drop in the availability of canned sardines on the market

“Suddenly I found my pants down, a hand between my legs. I did not know how he unbuckled my belt without me feeling him…”

Since the first day the people took to the streets on 25 January 2011, Egyptians and foreign observers alike have differed on decoding the message the protesters who ousted former President Hosni Mubarak wanted to send. There have been dozens of analyses explaining the triggers of the revolution, the nature of the social powers that led the protests, and the role of the new generation that forced itself onto the scene in the name of the revolution.

The second anniversary of the great people's revolution saw no serious signs of effective action to reach the goals of the revolution in terms of freedom, justice and human dignity. There has been no retribution for the martyrs and wounded of the first wave of the revolution, or against those who ruined the country for so many years.

At the same time that the Obama administration has decided to provide Egypt with the most sophisticated varieties of American weaponry, mass protests against the increasingly dictatorial regime of Mohamed Morsi reached a magnitude that threatens the very foundations of the Egyptian statehood. This shocking dichotomy raises questions as to why the most important leader in the world and the supreme commander of the most powerful armed force is so confused and so helpless while facing the challenges of radical Islam.

On Tuesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be the first Iranian president in decades to visit Egypt in order to attend a summit on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Cairo. This has sparked the usual outrage amongst groups like the ultra-conservative Salafists, the Egyptian branch of Wahhabism that is practiced in Saudi Arabia.