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The Audio Long Read

Greenwashing a police state: the truth behind Egypt’s Cop27 masquerade

The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Society & Culture

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sisi’s Egypt is making a big show of solar panels and biodegradable straws ahead of next week’s climate summit – but in reality the regime imprisons activists and bans research. The climate movement should not play along. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is The Guardian.

0:30.0

7 Masquerade by Naomi Klein

0:40.0

No one knows what happened to the lost climate letter.

0:43.9

All that is known is this.

0:46.7

Alah Abdel Fattah, one of Egypt's most high-profile political prisoners, wrote it while on a hunger

0:52.2

strike in his Cairo prison cell last month.

0:55.6

It was, he explained later, about global warming because of the news from Pakistan.

1:00.7

In Pakistan, the government says floods across the country have now killed more than 1300

1:05.7

people.

1:06.7

He was concerned about the floods that displaced 33 million people, and what that cataclysm

1:11.4

foretold about climate hardships and paltry state responses to come.

1:16.3

No city can cope with 1100 millimeters of water and 5 hours.

1:20.3

It's not possible.

1:26.5

A visionary technologist and intellectual, Abdel Fattah's first name, along with the

1:31.3

hashtag Freyala, have become synonymous with the 2011 pro-democracy revolution that turned

1:37.7

Cairo's terrier square into a surging sea of young people that ended the three decade

1:42.7

rule of Egypt's dictator, Hosni Mbarak.

1:46.5

Havdifattah is able to send and receive letters once a week.

1:53.7

Earlier this year, a collection of his prison writings was published as the widely celebrated

1:57.7

book you have not yet been defeated.

2:01.0

Havdifattah's family and friends live for those weekly letters, especially since 2nd

2:05.8

of April, when he started a hunger strike, ingesting only water and salt at first, and then

...

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