The Backstreet Boys sing in Arabic! (sorta)

And you wonder why Americans are fat...

American agricultural subsidies are one of those policies that couldn't possibly have any benefits for anyone: they make Americans fat by making Big Macs cheaper than salads, they belie any American claim to being committed to free trade, and they screw over poor farmers in Africa and elsewhere who actually produce better food for less. They give billions upon billions of tax money overwhelmingly to rich farmers. And with only .37% going to fruits and vegetables, and more than 70% going to meat and dairy, they actually incentivize the fattest people on Earth to eat more grease and more saturated fat and fewer vitamins!

You can't blame poor people for not wanting to spend 70% of their budget on food. Americans aren't fat because of laziness; it's because we make health expensive.

I can hath cheezburger?

You'd have to be so far beyond a nerd to appreciate this, but I found it hilarious...

For those who don't read Middle-English-spelling, scroll down to see the pictures

Local Imperialism: The Failure of Economic Reform

This is one of those where I write about way too much at once, so bear with me - I'm still relearning English.

One major reason I decided to work in economic reforms in Egypt was that it was a sort of back door into the workings of political reform, since any meaningful economic reform would have to require improving governance in a broader sense and changing institutional cultures and all that good stuff - which is exactly what political reform is all about. And while there was obviously no chance of meaningful political reform in the sense of democratization, I thought there might be a chance of meaningful economic reform, given the excitement over Egypt and other "emerging markets" at the time.

I came away from that experience having noticed a pattern with nearly every economic reform attempt I came across: that they all seemed blindly imposed in a top-down fashion. This was such a consistent pattern that it nearly drove me nuts, while at the same time I never had access to enough evidence to really be able to make an argument in this direction. A new Carnegie Endowment Report on the Political Economy of Reform in Egypt finally makes a very similar case in a systematic, articulate way. It's the best piece on economic reform in Egypt I've read in quite some time, and it draws the connection between economic reform and the building of grassroots representative organizations (i.e. democracy) - you can't have meaningful economic reform without involving all the economic stakeholders in the reform process in a way that defines the rights and responsibilities of each. This requires both confronting classism and developing effective means and institutions for information flow throughout the country, which are both certain prerequisites for meaningful democratization.

I just want to add a few things, drawing from my personal experience here.

The top-down nature of these new projects - committees, initiatives - was despite the fact that these projects generally only involved the government, the business community, and international financial institutions - excluding a majority of the private sector and civil society and basically most of the economic stakeholders in the results of this reform. The end result, unsurprisingly, was the widespread implementation of "systems" without any clue what these systems were supposed to do, which of course means that these systems won't achieve anything.

Governments have imposed top-down projects onto their people for a long time, with predictable results. For just one example (admittedly extreme), I arrived at the Aswan train station last year at 5:45pm with a ticket for the 6pm train to Cairo. The next Cairo train came at 7pm, so I tried to get on, but they didn't let me on because this was the 3pm train. The 6pm train would probably come at 9pm.

Governments impose onto their people, with ridiculous results. Nothing new. What's strange about the top-down nature of the recent economic reforms is that the government wasn't involving the people at all; it was imposing blindly onto itself. It was directly importing institutions from the EU - and doing that part fairly well, I might add - without the slightest consideration of how Egypt's economy is radically different from the EU's.

Welcome, friends, to the foreigner complex, which pervades everything about Egypt to the point where it imperializes itself.

The Great Unmentionable in American Politics

I haven't even been following too closely, but even I can tell that we need to start talking more about this issue.

Can someone tell me what's happening in the US?

I haven't been in the US for an extended period for almost two years now, so I really don't understand any of this Iran hoopla. Has everyone really gone psychotically paranoid over some kind of upcoming World War III with Iran?

Meanwhile I'm reading articles like this, and it strikes me as making such obvious points that I find it hard to believe he's responding to real people.

Anyone?

A good Tom Friedman op-ed!

I've very mixed feelings on Tom Friedman, but this recent op-ed is him at his best: making observations which Americans aren't paying enough attention to, and making good, should-be-common-sense points about them with analogies that clarify instead of dumbing down. When he's arguing for common sense, he's very good at it. And his common sense in this article is this: "9/11 has made us stupid." An obvious basic point, but this op-ed draws out the implications and connects it to other important issues in ways you don't usually think of.

He's been on my mind lately for other reasons, though; for my whole time in Egypt, whenever I talk to friends in the US or write on the blog, I've been trying to understand a foreign culture and explain it to friends who don't live here. Tom Friedman made his name explaining the Middle East to Americans, which is exactly what I'm trying to do here. And he's prone to certain... pitfalls that I more and more see myself falling into. More thoughts to come.

A simple link

I've mostly grown tired of following the Egyptian political scene, because as the Iraq war became clearly a loss for the US and Bush resumed the Republican policy of sucking up to dictators around the world, US democratic pressure on Egypt ceased and actually reversed, which killed the political reforms that had been somewhat hopeful earlier, which then killed the economic reforms which depended on openness and transparency and competence, and which basically finally rendered Egypt politically boring, and not too optimistic. Right now is basically an intense crackdown on opposition media, though the labor movement seems to be finally getting somewhere.

Anyway, I saw this article written by a frequent writer for the Muslim Brotherhood, and it's certainly his best article in quite a long time. It's uplifting to see that there are still people promoting political reform here, and making well-reasoned arguments for why American policy-makers should care. As usual, you have to turn to the Muslim Brotherhood for any of this stuff.

The Bush Administration hates patriotic Americans

Just another example

Egypt's Constitutional Amendments

For those who've been failed by their own media sources, Egypt is holding a national referendum tomorrow on a number of constitutional amendments that are billed as "part of a reform package" (the ruling party doesn't go into any more detail than that) but will actually remove all judicial oversight from elections, codify presidential "anti-terrorism" powers including arbitrary indefinite detention of anyone for no reason, and just generally wreck any chance Egypt could have of becoming a decent, functioning political entity anytime in the near future. For a general overview of the situation, read this; if you want a more through analysis of the amendments themselves and the threat they pose for Egypt's political scene, read this; if you want commentary on the US State Dept's nearly complete abandonment of pushing Egypt towards any political reform, read through this blog. Also Baheyya is always awesome, but she doesn't write enough.

The reason I'm concerned about the US response is not because of some essentialist conviction that Arabs can't handle democracy and therefore require external pressures and force from abroad. It's simply because with regards to Egypt, the government couldn't possibly operate a functional tax bureaucracy (2 years ago, less than 5% of Cairenes paid taxes at all; recent tax reforms have perhaps doubled this number but it's still like 8% or so; and even then, it's largely due to local branches of foreign companies paying because otherwise they'd get into legal trouble back home), so it's is responsive to its bankrollers - which means US military aid, which comes to about 2% of Egypt's annual GDP. Anywhere in life, where you get your money from is whom you're responsive to. And it's been proven a number of times, in fact, that
the US is the only significant force with any leverage for political reform in Egypt. The democracy push in 2005 brought about all sorts of reforms, albeit most of them token, and US support did embolden democracy activists in the region and provide them all sorts of cover. Political space definitely opened up. Egypt is not a puppet (especially now that the US, having lost two wars, needs to suck up to everyone in the world) but the US does have significantly more influence over the Egyptian government than the Egyptian people themselves do. (It's also always strange thinking, when I get into a scuff with an Egyptian cop, that my taxes pay his salary. And that's before I even factor in how many tourist dollars I bring in.)

So anyway, the referendum is tomorrow (Monday March 26), and most of the opposition has decided to boycott because they know the election results will be fixed, and that they'd just be legitimizing a farce if they voted. But the purpose of having this national referendum is so that the government can claim, for the sake of greater international legitimacy, to have the support of the majority of the Egyptian people (for the same reason every crackpot dictatorship has to call itself the 'democratic republic' of whatever), and so the way to take that way is to have a mass media spectacle protest. Usually these are downtown, in the main Tahrir square, in front of the Arab League building, the Mugamma (civil service bldg, where you go for visas and licenses and whatnot), the American University in Cairo, etc. So today's is about to start.

The government has sworn not to allow any protests or demonstrations, that they must be prevented from "delaying, opposing and stalling the democratic process". So the lines have been drawn...

I just passed through Tahrir a few hours ago, on the way back from a class at Al Azhar, and it is FILLED with beltagayya (plainclothes thugs), like tons and tons standing in formation waiting for protesters to come by. I've never seen that before... typically they wait in police trucks and occasionally microbuses and only come out when protesters are getting significantly out of hand. This is even with major protests that they've been expecting for ages - the judges last May, Lebanon over the summer, etc. Also these beltagayya look much more like normal people than usual - usually they have black boots and carry police clubs. Now it's jeans and, like, tennis shoes. The gist is: they're really playing it both ways. Egyptians all know that beltagayya are the ones to be afraid of (normal cops never hit you, because they fear the media attention), and the regime is just sticking them out there, daring a response. They're even in formation, so they're not even pretending, not even trying to deceive the Egyptians. But they're wearing more normal clothes than usual, because enough readers/viewers of foreign media ( i.e. the regime's foreign bankrollers) will be so stupid as to think that protesters are just being random and violent and beating each other up, and that the referendum is actually democratic and meaningful.

We'll see how it actually goes. But what saddens me the most is, the plainclothes thugs could beat the crap out of tons of Egyptians, probably rape the women (according to precedent), and then the fixed referendum could move along smoothly.

And they'd get away with it.

I can totally imagine a statement from the Interior Ministry to the effect of "We are not responsible for injuries caused by rowdy chaotic anti-Islamic terrorist protesters who don't represent the silent majority of peace-loving Egyptians losing control of their passions and beating each other up". And they'd get away with this. Especially because protesters in the US sometimes actually are rowdy chaotic terrorism-supporters who lose control of their passions and beat each other up.

Sigh. I'm not optimistic about life right now.

Arabs Tell Egypt To Learn From Israel

Read Orientalism and whatnot, and then see news stories like this . Arab Israelis calling upon Egypt to "Learn from Israel what human dignity means. Human dignity is a primary value in Israel."

When Arabs themselves find it so hard to avoid Orientalist stereotypes, might it be presumptuous to tell them they're wrong?

Terrorism and conspiracies

A piece from the Guardian (sent to me by Karim) about how terrorism works. Note the word "terror": the goal is not to kill, but to terrorize. It's a media strategy much more than a military one. 9/11 could have killed far more people if the attack took place a bit later in the day, when more people would have been in the building. The point was to grab a whole day of media attention, and make sure the phrase '9/11' was forever burned into the national consciousness.

Many people see Arabs and Muslims as having a conspiratorial mindset, of always looking for conspiracy theories to explain things. We joke that when it rains in Cairo, people blame the Israelis. There are stupid people everywhere, but insofar as that's true about Egypt, it definitely has a lot of different causes, such as some attitudes towards information. We have:

• a government that constantly lies to its people, prompting massive popular mistrust (I've read reports that the Ministry of Information wants to open a rumor control office; wouldn't it be more effective if the rest of the government just stopped lying so much, or at least got smarter about it?)
  
• the utter lack of authoritative information sources, making it hard to verify information, even about things like recent legislation or the spelling of a Minister's name
  
• official bans on information gathering (AUC profs have been threatened with deportation for conducting basic economic research, which is why I don't even trust most GDP figures; this also prohibits investigative journalism, preventing any independent verification of official information and rendering it therefore more suspect)
• you can't start an opposition without newspapers and other unifying mass communications, but you can't conduct independent investigative journalism on a level that would allow you to compete with official sources in terms of information, so you have to sell papers and all you can really use are theories and speculation
• as a result, it's pretty hard to trust any media source; most Egyptians certainly never become familiar with, or even have the opportunity to develop any trust for, systems of information verification that would ensure a media source's continued reliability; If I grew up in Egypt (of course depending heavily on social class and whatnot), I would be unlikely to trust any media sources on a regular basis
  
• a bargaining culture that makes bluffing almost essential in daily interactions, making most statements much harder to take at face value
• a need for face-saving that causes people on the street to make up directions because they can't admit they don't know
• a frequent hoarding of information because it's a source of authority and power, presumably because information is scarce and therefore valuable

All major difficulties; when you have questions and can't trust the answers, you'll make up some sort of answers.

But there's another side: why do the same questions keep coming up? Egyptians could be focusing conspiracy theories on a million different things.

I think a lot of the questions behind these conspiracy theories, and their particular urgency, are prompted by something simple: incompetence. One example: why did the US military in Iraq secure the oil fields in Baghdad while not stopping the rioting and looting? My best guess: when you stupidly expect to be greeted as liberators with flowers and a red carpet, it's going to be alot harder to pacify a population than it will be to secure inanimate oil fields. But it takes a lot of stupidity to be in that situation, and I'd really like to believe Americans are smarter than that.

Another example: when Israel and the US have precision GPS/laser-guided missiles that can target within 5meters any location on earth, why so many civilian casualties? My guess: they're not so precise as they claim; precision targeting requires much more information than is generally available in the middle of a military operation; precision weapons are obscenely expensive; it's more risky for nearby soldiers because they have less confidence that the target has been hit; perhaps, some military goals are more easily achieved by appearing slightly indiscriminate ("shock and awe" does not attempt to invoke precision targeting); and they figure that the losses in military effectiveness are not always worth the civilian lives saved. Still, Americans have obsessed over the loss of even one of their lives, as Israel has over the capture of 2 soldiers, so this disregard for human life seems a little strange.

So another question, going back to the article linked above: Why would the US administration capture Bin Laden quickly when they could drag this out and profit off it for years to come? I don't even know an answer to this one that doesn't rely, at some point, on simple trust. Bin Laden is hard to find, we thought it would be easier, unreliable partners in Pakistan, blablabla.

A major difficulty, it seems, is that America and Israel are both known for being incredibly competent. Israel, albeit with tons of money and expertise imported from abroad, has made the desert bloom, after all. American business is still the envy of the world in many ways. Ambitious Egyptians frequently look up to American expats for management and technical expertise, seek work in multinational corporations, want to associate with Americans.

So the question becomes: in this incredibly important and risky foreign policy enterprise, why are they suddenly just crap?

Clearly, there must be some other reasons! Secret hidden intentions, or something.

No, they might actually just not be as good as everyone thought they were.

Not sure what policy recommendations come out of this, although sucking less is one option.

Girly Fight!

Syria and Egypt, taking their cue from Iran, screaming at each other to distract from their total inability to do anything.

Back to blogging

Sorry everyone that I've been AWOL for so long... I've just moved to a new apartment in Dokki (on the west side of the Nile: residential and much more boring than the historical east side, but quieter and a much better place to study) and as soon as I get unpacked and settled, I'll post about my trip home, Istanbul, Upper Egypt with Greg, this whole Lebanon mess, and what the hell I'm doing with my life. I just wanted to quickly post this brief piece from the July/August Yale Alumni Magazine:

"You Say Hillel, I say Halal"

Resignation

I just quit work today!

I was in her office, writing letters and taking notes and doing other basic writing tasks. I finish up, wait for her to get off the phone, and:

Me: Ok, I'll write this letter to the Ambassador, and there are two other things. First, I'm resigning to study Arabic full-time at the end of June. Second, what should I say in this letter to the Chamber of Commerce?
Her (unfazed): Ok, someone new will come on Sunday to take your place, so transfer all your files and such to Mike and make sure he can show the new person everything you do.

Usually I'm a little afraid of confrontations like this one. It went surprisingly well. Which means, here comes the trademark Arab passive-aggressiveness...

Two more Egyptian jokes

Both are courtesy of Osama. Draw your own conclusions.

Mubarak, Bush, and Queen Elizabeth were burning in hell after dying, and Queen Elizabeth wants to call her people on Earth to see how they're doing. She asks the devil for a phone, talks for 5 minutes, and is then shocked to learn that the bill was $5million. Unable to do anything else, she sucks it up and pays the bill.

Bush also wants to call his people, so he talks for ten minutes and is shocked to see a bill of $10million. Again, he's unable to do anything else, so he pays the bill.

Mubarak realizes, "I should call my people! I may not have been the best president, but I was a president, and I want to call my people". He talks for 20 hours and receives a bill of $1 .

Bush and Elizabeth ask the devil, "why was his call so cheap?!"

"It was a local phone call."

I don't know what to make of that one.... so here's another, a little shorter and simpler:

75 million people gathered outside of the presedential palace to kick Mubarak out of power.

When Mubarak heard the noise, he asked one of his advisors what was going on. His advisor wanted to break the news to him softly and so he said, "They're gathering here to say goodbye to you."

Mubarak asks, "Why? Where are they going?"

God-given rights

From the Financial Times:

"Mr Mubarak insists that reforms are under way and lashed out at coverage of the protests.

"If they [journalists] think that what they are doing is an expression of their freedom, they should remember who gave them this chance, and who is insisting on its continuity," he told the state newspaper, al-Gomhuria."

"We gave you these rights! How dare you use them against us?" It smacks of American exceptionalism: "we invented human rights! How dare you hold us to our own standards?"

No wonder these two governments get along so well.

Why Egypt Works

There's way too much to cover regarding the protests and the beatings - the thugs are still getting more media-savvy, this time waiting until most of the media had left before they kidnapped and beat people - so instead, here's a great piece by Ahdaf Soueif.

Another Thursday in Cairo

More protests in solidarity with the judges, on the one-year anniversary of the amendment allowing for "multiparty" "elections". MB is rumoured to be bringing out up to 10,000 protesters. I don't think that's possible, but I'll catch whatever I can catch of the protests later today.

From Freedom For Egyptians:

• International support is being rallied to show and express support for Egypt’s democracy and freedom tomorrow through pro-reform and democracy Egyptian Judges Club (Syndicate).
• Egyptian Judges are calling upon all Egyptians to come and confirm their commitment to Egypt’s freedom in front of Cairo’s Supreme Court, down town. More details here.
• International support is rallying everywhere in the world. This is really a cute map for all demos around the world. It does not include South Korea’s protest though. Cairo’s protest is extended to Beirut, London, Paris, Athens, The Hague, Seoul, New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Toronto and Montreal and the list keeps growing.
• On the eve of May 25, a protest is planned at Tahrir square, Cairo’s largest and main square in preparation for the big day.
• Cairo lights will be turned off from 9-10 PM in solidarity with Egypt’s judges.
• At the American University in Cairo, a protest is planned at the Greek Campus. The University is located at Tahrir Square.
• Egypt’s popular movement Kefaya (Kifaya)‘s coordinator George Ishak is sending a message to all activists abroad who are showing their support to Egypt before May 25.
• Protest of university professors in front of main hall of Cairo University calling for the release of detained faculty and students at 11:30 AM.
• Another main protest in front of the Judges Club is planned at 1:30 PM.
• The International Campaign in Solidarity with the Egyptian Judges has the timeline for all world demonstrations.

Protests around the world.... London, Washington DC, Paris, San Fransisco...

For more info: Rantings of a Sandmonkey, Shayfeen..

Poetry?

Noting my incessant inability to actually write anything myself, I have to find other ways to contribute.

More Egyptian Humor

Ayman Nour has his issues, but regardless of who he actually is, he represents exactly the kind of secular democrat that Mubarak is so afraid of, because, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, he can't use them as an excuse for cracking down on dissent. So of course Mubarak is going to be fairly light against actual extremists - as long as he can claim to be fighting terrorism - while directing most of his attention against secular democratic opponents. The last thing Mubarak wants is a viable moderate democratic opposition, religious or secular, and he's increasingly shameless about that.

So they lock away Ayman Nour for 5 years on bogus charges, while at the same time reprimanding Hisham Bastawissi (one of the judges) for criticizing election fraud. The US expresses disappointment, slightly more harshly than usual. And Egypt's response? BBC reports:

Egypt's foreign ministry said on Friday it was "astonished" at the US statement , which "implied an affront to the rulings and independence of the Egyptian judiciary".

Egyptians are known for their sense of humor, but I didn't realize it went so far as to include diplomatic statements...

Egyptian humor

Two Egyptian jokes that I like better every day.

The first is about election fraud:

In 2000, Bill Clinton is afraid concerning the upcoming presidential elections. He's been impeached, the country seems to be moving to the right, he's afraid of a resurgence of religious politics...

So he calls up Mubarak: "You're good at this, can you send someone over to take care of the elections here?" Mubarak promises to send his most trusted advisor, and assures Clinton that he has nothing to worry about.

So the election goes the way it goes, and Clinton calls up Mubarak, furious. Mubarak hasn't talked to his advisor yet, and so is confused, but he apologizes to Clinton and says he'll look into it.

Mubarak's advisor returns and Mubarak asks him, "What happened? Clinton just called me, furious!"

His advisor replies: "Congratulations, Mr. President. The United States is now yours."


The next one is about Egyptian passivity:

Mubarak wants some civil unrest so he can show his foreign supporters that they need him, or else Egypt will be in total chaos. So he gathers his cabinet and asks them, "We already beat them and steal their dignity, so what else can we do to provoke a revolt?"

His advisors are confused for a while, but eventually they realize: "We only beat them a few times a year, so let's do something that affects them every day."

They decide to put a toll on the 6th of October bridge, which everyone in Cairo uses daily. 5LE.

A few days later, Mubarak asks, "Are the people complaining?" "Nobody has said anything."

They increase the toll. 10LE.

Nobody says anything.

Mubarak is getting frustrated.

50LE, which is a week's salary for alot of people.

A bit of grumbling. But nobody says anything.

Now, Mubarak is desperate. His supporters are visiting soon and if he doesn't show some civil unrest, he might not get the emergency funds he needs. So he takes all the soldiers from all the embassies and puts them on the bridge, and tells them to rape anyone who wants to cross the bridge.

A few days later, he asks his advisors, "Are they complaining yet?"

"They humbly request if you could put more soldiers on the bridge, because now they're late for work."

Some Responses to Protests

Fortunately, both judges (who were being sacked for criticizing election fraud) were acquitted, yet Ayman Nour's appeal was rejected. The judge involved for Nour's appeal is a total crackpot. Occasional good editorials on this.

Some media coverage misses a few points though. BBC reports:

"Many of the beatings were administered by pro-government thugs backed by riot police. They were seen plunging into crowds of demonstrators and beating people to the ground."

Almost makes it sound like the thugs were freelance supporters of the government.

Hell no. The thugs were government employees, who came out of troop carriers (the same trucks that riot police came out of, the same trucks the army travels in) and looked completely conspicuous. Put simply, they looked ridiculous, with stupid-looking "plain clothes" (3 layers of denim on a hot day) and were easily identified with a second glance.

The US response to all this was tepid and meaningless ("we know they believe in freedom and democracy, the brutal beatings were just a mistake on their part, plus we're glad that there are protests now! so we're not going to even talk about the billions of dollars, 3% of their GDP, we give them every year so they can buy fighter jets and then pay their soldiers to harass women and masturbate on the street"), so Egypt feels no pressure in any way, and Mubarak still feels bold enough to rip on the US for it (I miss the days, just a few years ago, when the US deserved, and got, some respect from the world), and now there's all this talk about strains in the US-Egypt relationship.

Mubarak keeps bringing out the stupid line of 'reforms must be gradual' (even if it's true... meanwhile, you fix elections, and beat people for standing on the street, and imprison everyone you don't like?) or else Egypt will be in chaos (Egyptians might just be too lazy for this to be a problem). Yet judges are probably the single best chance for gradual reform that Egypt has.

Sigh.

Protests in Cairo

This morning, protesters gathered outside the High Court building and along Talaat Harb St. to protest the hearing of the same two judges as last week's protest, who criticized the elections as fraudulent and were therefore suspended. The judiciary has become a focal point for many of the human rights groups and other protest movements in Egypt, and this is the latest flashpoint. Kifaya (enough) and the Muslim Brotherhood were the main groups in these protests, and many other human rights organizations joined in as well.

Apparently, the police learned well from last week. They had been caught off guard once, because they didnt know what to expect, and the police ended up beating, pretty badly, several Arab journalists (a alJazeera reporter got it worst), dragging a friend of mine through the streets, and just lots of random people, including women.

This time, they knew what they were doing a little better. They got the beatings in early, before alot of the media was there, and were more deliberate and unhesitating. They didnt allow the protesters a chance to regroup, either, because they kept flanking their movements. Afterwards, they didnt need to use so much violence. At one point, plainclothes thugs (who are responsible for ALL the violence - the riot police just stand there not moving, and theyre actually the safe place to stand in these demonstrations) encircled a bunch of us, including several MPs from the Muslim Brotherhood, and just tried to lock us in place, pushing us into a felafel restaurant or something (I couldnt see). No beatings. Yet they managed to control the crowd and dissipate the protest, and arrest who they wanted to arrest.

After playing such childish games with the elections and Ayman Nour's trial, the government is finally learning some tactics! I'm proud of them. They're growing up.

More protests tonight...

Visiting home

I'm visiting home! Flying into NYC June 3rd, Zarah's graduation on June 8th, LSAT on June 12, visiting Istanbul from June 15th-19th, and then back to Cairo June 20th.

I can't even speculate about what it'll be like. I won't be able to cross the street. Things that take up all day in Egypt will take 10 seconds, and then I'll be clueless about what else to do. Meanwhile, cramming my brain into being superlogical (400 pages of exercises in the past two days, and I'm already frying my brain), and then coming back to Egypt?

Palestine - Sights

Palestine Holy Sights. Easter in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Passover in Jerusalem (we even fled Egypt to get there!), and Juma in Al-Aqsa.


The kind of picture you just have to send home. Me on the City Wall of Old City Jerusalem, with the Dome of the Rock in the background. The city looks alot better than I do.


Easter Mass in the Church of the Nativity, Jesus' birthplace, in Bethlehem. The service, in Arabic, was different in structure and even musical structure from Masses I've been to in Europe and the US. The church itself also had a different architectural style, shaped simply as a long hall, rather than designed to resemble a cross.


The Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Easter.


The tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A powerful structure, with different entrances for different Christian denominations. Jerusalem is a really bizarre mix of religions sometimes, and I'm not even talking about when religious holidays overlap.


Jews at the Wailing Wall, the sole remaining wall of the Temple of Solomon. Holiest site in the world for Jews. The Dome of the Rock is built on the platform above it.
Picture Credit: Heba Gowayed
[Correction: the Western Wall was not actually a wall of the Temple itself, but of the retaining wall built by Solomon around the mountain. The Temple itself is buried under the Dome.]


Old City Jerusalem at Night. Michelle and Nate.


A street in Old City Jerusalem at night.


Dome of the Rock. The actual rock is gigantic, taking up the whole center of the building. It is a memorial building, not a masjid, since it has a circular structure. Touching the actual rock, and the Prophet's footstep from which he ascended to heaven, was a really powerful experience. Yet somehow, praying at the Dome didn't feel much different.


Dome of the Rock at night. This is my view as I fell asleep, from the roof of the hostel I stayed at in Jerusalem.


Dome of the Rock at sunrise. My view as I woke up the first morning I slept on the roof. I literally woke up, opened my eyes, took a picture, and went back to sleep.


Masjid al-Aqsa. Picture taken from the Dome of the Rock.


A view of the Dome from a church on the Mount of Olives. In the Torah, and Old Testament, the Mount of Olives is the place from which God will begin to redeem the dead at the end of days, so many Jews want to be buried there. Big cemeteries everywhere on the mountain. Also the site of numerous biblical events, including Jesus' last night before his betrayal. There are so many churches here that it's hard to remember them all. You can retrace Jesus' path over several days by visiting the churches in a specific order.
[Correction: The Mount of Olives isn't mentioned in the Torah, but from later books and from further commentary]


Inside the tomb of Abraham, in Hebron. I wasn't allowed to enter because I'm Muslim (they just asked me straight out at the entrance, and I'm not about to lie about religion to get into a religious site), so Michelle took this picture.
[Update: The idea is that there are two separate sites, Jewish and Muslim, built back-to-back over the "tomb," and the police don't allow either group into the other's site. On paper, Israeli policies are fairly strictly forbidden to discriminate, in terms of religion, language, geography, I'm not sure what else. For example, I think all street signs must be in both Hebrew and Arabic. So I'm not sure what happened with me in Hebron, because we asked a lot of people and looked around for quite a while.]

Palestine - April 14-27

As always, I'm late.

This trip was simply so fascinating and interesting that I really have no desire or impulse to talk about it. Not my usual response, I know, but there's just so much I don't know how to describe. We also went only to the West Bank, and were unable to get into Gaza despite having ridiculous contacts. Without seeing Gaza, I'd really rather not generalize.

So instead, here are a bunch of pictures with captions:


On the bus from Bethlehem to Ramallah on the first day, we were interrupted by a herd of sheep led by a few shepherds. Shepherds in Bethlehem...


Graffiti is often disturbing but sometimes just funny. This one roughly translates to "felafel is the restaurant of peace".


Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim (prominent Arab sociologist, one of the most important democracy advocates in the Middle East, organizer of this trip) and the President of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr. Aziz Dwiek. The PLC was our first stop. Notice the Qur'anic verse on the big PLC sign, which roughly translates to "And you shall determine your affairs through mutual consultation".


With leaders of a refugee camp in the West Bank. For some reason, we were late to every visit to a refugee camp, prompting many bitter jokes about "who cares about an hour here and there, we've been waiting 58 years".


Refugee kids waving to us as our bus drives away


A view from Jerusalem. You can see the Wall from a distance as it traverses the countryside.


Our group in the Palestinian municipality services building, sort of like city hall. This is where Palestinians go for licenses, permits, to register for different things, etc. We were here to meet with various NGOs.


Student Council elections at Birzeit University, the oldest Palestinian university. This is for student council elections, and yet they inspire such fervor. Palestinians are hungry for democracy. Almost makes you forget the key distinction between campaigns and democracy, which roughly translates to: yelling vs. compromise.


Blood on the walls after Israeli troops fired into a Palestinian organization's office and killed several people. As a memorial, they kept the blood on the walls and put up little papers with their names and ages and dates of death. Some Palestinian organizations deal with so much crap and yet manage to be surprisingly effective and professional. Made it hard to go back to Egypt, which has no excuse whatsoever for its shocking dysfunction.


On top of Jerusalem forest, which is sort of a mountain. Every time a Jew is born in Jerusalem, Israel plants a tree in the Jerusalem forest.
On the left is Shadi Zmorrod, a Palestinian who runs theater workshops and directs plays and circuses with children in conflict-ridden zones. If the key to peace is better communication, it's important to explore every form
of expression. He's run workshops with kids from Palestine-Israel, India-Pakistan, Greece-Turkey, etc. and is now putting together a Palestinian circus. One more example of how some Palestinians deal with so much hardship in their lives but are often able to do so much. Perhaps being so aware of death has made them know the importance of making the most of life. Part of that is knowing the importance of hospitality: he did so much for us, showing us around, talking with us, and spending time with us...
In the middle is Ginga, an American girl, daughter of missionaries, who grew up in the West Bank and speaks flawless Arabic. She somehow absorbed the best of Arab hospitality. I plan to be in touch with both of them for a long time.


"Palestinian Juggling." With rocks.


From Jericho in the West Bank, we rented bikes and tried to bike to a nearby Israeli settlement. We went around this roadblock and were caught by the Israeli army, and told to turn around. Before leaving, we took a few pictures by the roadblock, which is actually just a pile of dirt. Meanwhile, they drove back and forth a few times to keep an eye on us. So yes, we tried to get to a settlement but were caught by the Israeli army.


I just like this picture. Michelle on the left, Nate on the right. I miss parks.


In the West Bank town of Hebron, which has had problems of violence between Palestinians and Israeli settlers, especially since the Second Intifada started. The Israeli army built this fence above the marketplace to protect it from settler harrassment. Fadi, a friend of Ginga's who gave us a great tour of Hebron (more overwhelming Arab hospitality), is pointing to some of the heavy rocks that settlers tried to throw onto the marketplace.

Civic Power in China

One thing I'm coming to believe in fairly strongly, and I've no clue why, is in the power of competent organizational practices to foster democratic cultural and therefore political change. Tocqueville's points about civil associations fostering democratic political habits, creating public involvement in the public life. Elections, at the very least, require administrative competence, which is sorely lacking in most bureucracies in the world.

If these effective organizational cultures have to come from multinational corporations, so be it - near everyone in Egypt wants to work for Vodafone anyway, so who am I to criticize them based on some aesthetic nonsense about globalization? They just don' t want to waste their lives away sitting on their asses listening to bosses yelling about nonsense all day.

So here's an interesting article about a similar effect taking place in China:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/world/asia/11china.html

We've always wondered when economic growth would come to bite China's government in the ass. It's surprising, because China's government is one of the most effective administrations in the world today, but I suppose

In any case, this is the main appeal of democracy: Democracy means COMPETENCE.

Given that, all things considered, the Bush administration may have done more lasting damage to the cause of democracy promotion than any recent world trends or events.

Good day!

So this morning my roommate asked me if I could be home early because a handyman was coming by to fix every last remaining annoyance in the apartment. So yay on the home front.

And then at work, we have a staff meeting (finally!!) and actually start talking about things. I have a bunch of things to work on now, and some real direction. Committees are where the meaty stuff is for a business association (for any NGO, in my experience...), not the big names who say the same thing every time. Focusing on select sectors of the Egyptian economy, exploring and discussing what's holding it back, preparing meetings and agendas and similar materials.

And my boss is surprisingly cool about a few things. We were planning our next staff meeting and I was the only one objecting to a Sunday 9am time. At first, they were making fun of me, 'oh hello Chairman, sorry we can't all adjust to your schedule', and then I say "I have Arabic classes in the morning" and suddenly it's "Wow! That's so cool! Sure, we can reschedule the meeting, we're flexible. We can help you out with Arabic too! Just come in and we'll talk in classical Arabic every so often every day"

So I'm actually procrastinating way too much just by writing this, since I have some 5 documents to write in the next hour, but wow! A good day at work!

Just had to write that down.

Culture Shock in Earnest

Supposedly, in Egypt (and presumably other cultures), foreign workers go through several phases. The first two or three months, you feel euphoric: shisha! Street soccer! Scuba diving! Awesome people!

Then, roughly 3 months in, culture shock starts to hit. Hard. I mention to everyone I talk to that Cairo is a great city until you try to do something. There are no systems, no sanity, no predictability, and just nothing works as it's supposed to. Communication here isn’t so much a problem of language as of concepts: very few people understand things like ‘responsibility’ and ‘punctuality’ even if the translations are readily available. Language mostly provides a handy excuse.

That’s me now. It started, interestingly enough, when I started writing this blog, just a few days ago. I’m a notoriously on-or-off person: I can sit back and do nothing for months at a time, but when I slightly start to do something, I’m anxious and nervous until it's actually done right. Not the best trait for adapting to Egyptian culture, since Egyptian business life is much closer to doing nothing than to actual productivity. Which is easier? My brain only started functioning again because I started Arabic classes, LSAT studying, and writing this blog.

I’m fairly certain that everyone around me is happier with me trying to do nothing, than with me trying to fix the place and make it functional and professional. Most everyone in the office agrees that management needs serious reworking, and this is evident by the high turnover rate. But nobody really cares that much about it.

Are Americans work-obsessed simply because they have better jobs? Every job I've ever had before, I've gone pretty damn overboard on, even if I didn't feel like I fit in or that my efforts would be rewarded. What makes this different?

Even stanger is that, to the outside world, to members and supporters and beneficiaries, the office seems to be doing a pretty good job. I think this is perhaps due to low standards, but it’s clear that in the past few years, membership has skyrocketed, activities and events have increased, clout with Ministers and CEOs has increased. Maybe the office’s work is such that high turnover doesn’t really matter?

Regardless, I’m fixing this place. I have a lot of things to take care of and if I’m spending 8 hours a day here, I’m setting it up so it’s a place worth spending 8 hours a day.

And if I have to bash some heads to get things done, so be it. It’d be a good habit.

Salaam Program Interviews

I can’t say that much about these interviews because I’d expect a certain level of non-disclosure regarding anything I said in an interview, so I can't repeat any of the more interesting things we heard. It was interesting interviewing friends, though; I actually drilled them harder than the others because a)I knew they couldn't lie to me and b) this was a chance to find out interesting things about them that they wouldn't tell me otherwise.

But conducting Salaam interviews gave me a new sense of why I came to Egypt, and why I came through AIESEC rather than Peace Corps or Fulbright. How you evaluate others is always when your values really come out: in this case, who do I want going to the US on an exchange program? And of course, when you ask people that question, you wonder, “why did I want to go on an exchange program”?

We were interviewing Egyptians who wanted to work in the US for 3 months to a year. There are many obvious reasons why an Egyptian would want this: actual meaningful work experience, a tremendous increase in salary, free availability of liquor and attractive loose women, American life makes sense, to improve their English, see what the “Great Satan” is all about… So of course we had to filter through a lot of that and make sure their reasons were legitimate: people who would further the aims of the exchange opportunity, and not try to stay in the US after the program ended. This comes down, largely, to their ability to take advantage of opportunities. My favorite question was the ‘AUC question’: “Since you’ve had so much exposure to the US, why should we give you this opportunity rather than to someone who’s had less exposure? We don’t want to waste this on you.”

I think of interviews as having two types of questions: questions where you try to trip them up, and questions where you give them an opportunity to shine. I was pretty sure the above question was of the latter type: it’s a chance to talk about how, with your limited exposure, you’ve gained a keen interest in something American and so you know what to look for. Impress us that you’ve made something of your limited exposure.

Alas, it was not to be, for the same question ended up as more of a testing question. It was like a lot of people hadn’t thought about that before.

What? You’ve spent years in the US, and you never thought we’d ask what you had done with that experience that made you worthy of another one?

But in addition to seeing amazingly frequent pitfalls, there were some shining moments, that made clear why I went on Salaam in the first place. Why go for work experience rather than academic experience? Why be so excited about an exchange program when you have no clue what job you’ll end up in?

This summer, I wrote:
“I decided a while ago that I wouldn't make any major career decisions while at Yale simply because I felt I needed real world experience first. Law school will come in time, but I know enough former lawyers that I need to be sure of why I want to go, and what I hope to do with a law degree. Studying abroad, while enlightening and incredibly valuable, is still in an academic environment. AIESEC and the Salaam Program are great because they put a great deal of emphasis on involving you in the culture: instead of spending your nights wandering around the city with Americans, you very much become a part of the local social scene. The Peace Corps, as far as I understand, seeks to improve relations by focusing mostly on the volunteer work that Americans do to build communities, helping with education or improving health care in foreign countries. Social support seems to vary greatly in different countries and positions. Salaam offers similar work as well, but puts a lot more emphasis on simply meeting and talking to people. Not only is this a great social experience and a great opportunity for self-discovery, but it helps with my academic interests: to delve into political, religious, legal theory, it helps to know how people in different cultures approach and think about similar life problems: their attitudes towards concepts like freedom, equality, respect, authority; the importance they attach to work vs friends and family; what or how much they expect from religious institutions, legal systems, various social groups.”

This kind of cultural involvement you only get from engaging the business environment: not simply as an onlooker, but trying to work it out and be productive in this environment.

I’m not expecting brilliant theoretical insights, but here are a few things I have learned:

1) I don’t respect rules either when they make no sense. I used to think democracy and rule of law should be advocated separately, but I’m realizing that rule of law requires, first of all, good laws, and without feedback from the populace, I’ve no idea where those good laws would come from.

2) Tocqueville was right in emphasizing how many habits and thoughts of power and authority derive from civil associations. In Egypt’s case, it’s business culture that sets the tone of the political culture: obsession with titles and seating arrangements, single central authority figure with no clear assignments for what anyone else does, very little upward communication, relaxed and not very professional. There are appealing things about the business culture here, especially in that it’s a much friendlier environment, but none of these benefits translate to politics.

3) Multinational corporations have a much bigger role to play than I realized earlier. It seems everyone here wants to work for Vodafone; if not, for some other multinational. Hell, half the people I ask (middle-class and up) say their 20-year goal is to be CFO of a multinational. It’s a question of management systems: people want a management system that brings out their skills and potential. Economic reforms are effectively just bringing in new multinationals, and trying to learn management systems from them.

4) They seriously have to start respecting the social sciences, and this includes everything from management to sociology. It’s always been an interesting trend that Muslim extremists are frequently engineers or doctors or something in the physical sciences: science is the pinnacle of Western enlightenment skepticism, positivism, and ultimately glory. Plus, these people are well educated, presumably not ignorant, and at the tops of their societies in many ways. Partially, it’s that every Egyptian (and Pakistani, for that matter) parent wants their kid to be a doctor or an engineer. Engineering is so respected that even MRS degrees are often in engineering. But this means that there are a shitload of Egyptian engineers and lawyers and doctors making almost no money, since there’s no demand left and no way to manage them effectively anyway. Are we surprised that they’re frustrated?

5) “Modernization” in Cairo seems much more blatantly Western and anti-Islamic than it is in the US: similar to the concept of secularism, which means atheism here, but means free exercise of religion in the US. It's mostly a problem of how modernization is managed: foreigners are where all the money is, so Egyptian businesses want to appear more Western and less ‘radical’, so many of them act anti-Muslim. Damn suck-ups.

6) As a result, practicing Islam is in some ways easier in the US, because being religious is less of a barrier to other things you want to do. Upper classes seem much more scared of it here.

7) Egyptians often insist that they love Cairo, but it’s hard to see, as a foreigner, exactly how they express this love. Still working on that. Not too many civil associations or movements to fix this or help that or abolish this other thing. Might be a similar effect to the Africa Cup final, where Mustafa Mahmoud Square was still full of people 7 hours after the match ended. Take every chance you have to feel pride.

8) Damn, these people are dependent on their mothers. It’s making me much more dependent too.

9) Arabic is a very logical and systematic language. This is not a perfect match for Egyptian society. Maybe this is part of why colloquial Arabic is so different?

10) I’m going to miss things not making sense. If there was an expectation for things to make sense, so much else of Egyptian life would be simply unbearable. As it is, it’s quite enjoyable.

11) It's not surprising that Egyptians don't trust international media... all media in Egypt is total shit. Business magazines don't fact check, even getting the names and positions of Ministers wrong. This is damn basic information. Even asking for directions can be a mess, as you keep getting conflicting information from everyone you ask, including cops stationed in the area. Information availability, in general, is so bad that the only thing you can trust is something you've witnessed personally, or heard from someone you trust deeply. Of course distant media produced from halfway around the world, and that says something unfavorable about your religion or ethnicity or country, isn't going to be trusted. Not sure what this means for American PR efforts.

12) Egyptian life just flows. It’s awesome. Everyone else should learn from this. And Egyptians should be prouder of this.

The Africa Cup

This was really an amazing experience. I saw a lot of matches, but there are two worth mentioning: the first, and the last.

In Egypt, movie tickets have specified seating, while football games don’t. So we had to line up hours in advance to make sure we could all sit together. (It might have to do with Egyptians being late all the time: it makes sure everyone goes way early to a football match so they can get good seats; but at movies, people will come late anyway, so you need to impose some order on that)

The first had an amazing intro, which even Mubarak attended:



but the match itself, Egypt vs Libya, was such a rout that there weren’t even any photographers at the Egyptian goal. This is what makes soccer so boring: there’s no minimum level of action.

Nevertheless, it was remarkable simply because of the sheer energy from the crowd. I find football mostly a pretty slow game, and this one was just dull, but I found myself cheering and shouting and going crazy.

But overall it was a crappy day because the match actually sucked and I lost my Razr phone, a graduation gift from my uncle (first time I’ve lost something significant in 10 years) so instead let’s talk about the Final.

It was pretty surprising that Egypt made it that far, but after an upset or two (the one good thing about soccer: because it doesn’t require constant performance in the same way as tennis or basketball, upsets are common and much more sudden), we were watching Egypt in the final:



The match itself was one of the most tense and exciting I’ve ever experienced in sports. SO many close calls, and it even came down to a shoot-out at the end. Yet the Cairo crowd response was what made it really memorable, even the subject of numerous international news reports:







This all made very little sense to me. So many people in the streets “celebrating”, but a lot of them actually standing around doing nothing. Hell, I can understand rushing the field, and mob violence, because there’s some action there, but standing around in Cairo just waving a flag weakly for hours?

Makes more sense when you realize that this is one of very few chances that Egyptians take advantage of to really feel proud of their country. They could have a lot more…

Danish Cartoons 3: The Importance of Free Speech

Somehow, this issue has turned from “don’t insult us” to “free speech is anti-Islam” and “free speech must be restricted to exclude offense to religion”. It's one thing not to appreciate insult; it's entirely another to make up this bullshit about free speech.

First of all, Islam has thrived under free speech; it's what allowed Islam to grow so fast in the Prophet's (S) time. The Treaty of Hudaibiyah, between the Muslims in Madinah and the pagans in Mecca, was unfair on its face to Muslims in every way. But the Prophet (S) accepted it because it allowed him to preach Islam freely. Islam grew SO fast then, faster than it ever had before, that the pagans had to break the treaty because they realized how much weaker they were getting. This is how Islam gains from an atmosphere of freedom of speech.

Second, freedom of speech is meaningless if it doesn't protect offensive speech. Nobody will ever censor things like 'flowers make me happy' or 'peace is good'. The only ideas that are ever censored are offensive ones: criticisms of government, major institutions, other organized groups. Things like "China shot students in Tiananmen Square" or "Mao Zedong was the biggest mass murderer of the 20th century". Chinese nationalists can get pretty offended by those. The whole point of freedom of speech is so that you can attack people, and groups, and beliefs, without fear of physical retribution.

Mutual respect is important, but it has to come through open and honest discourse. Otherwise, you just end up with a situation where everyone secretly hates each other. I ran an interfaith group for 2 years and at one point, we would have to start each discussion with everyone openly insulting each other just so we could actually talk about the issues. Abandoning freedom of speech for the sake of fake tolerance just makes the same racism, which already exists, deeper and stronger. That's a recipe for disaster.

The purpose of freedom of speech, and democracy, and so forth, is not to eliminate conflict. That's not possible. The purpose is to focus that conflict into something productive, into a dialogue or debate where meaningful communication can take place. And sometimes it takes offense to kickstart that communication. I routinely have amazing conversations that start off by openly insulting another person's beliefs. The medieval interfaith discussions that we look back to with fondness today were often pretty insulting. That doesn't mean they disrespected each other; it just means that they strongly believe their positions.

Why can't we respect people enough that we don't fear them taking offense at every provocation? If people actually believe their beliefs, they should be able to take it. Just try to insult a missionary. You'll get frustrated and give up way before they even flinch. Most people can't stand missionaries, but I find some of them (those that say more than “you're all going to hell" the easiest people to talk to. They actually say what they believe. As it is, we have to assume everyone is so fragile that they're not worth talking to anyway. You can never get a meaningful discourse out of this; it'll just perpetuate misunderstanding, distrust, and hatred.

This principle is amply demonstrated throughout Islamic history. After all, the Qur'an states that "Truth stands out clear from error" (2:256, Yusuf Ali translation). What better argument for open discourse can there be? The history of Islam is full of other examples of thriving public debate: theological debates in Baghdad, Christians in Ottoman Courts, letters among scholars like Maimonides and Averroes. They would actually say what they believe, and the discussions resulting were astonishing in their candidness, sincerity, and capacity to bring understanding. Why are we surprised that we don’t understand each other, when we don’t actually say what we believe?

Now, you may ask: if Islam is so strongly in favor of free speech, why did the Muslim world go nuts and start burning embassies?

My sense is that many of the violent protests (most of them, I’m not trying to capture every single person’s motivation) were fomented by secular (if not fully secular, then at least impious enough to manipulate the faith of honest believers for personal political gain) elites, pressured for democratic reforms by the West while pressured for more Islam from growing opposition at home. Here was a golden opportunity: a chance to discredit democracy while strengthening their own reputation as defenders of the faith. Two birds with one stone! Why wouldn’t they jump at the opportunity?

Never mind the total tampering with the original cartoons, fabricating new cartoons to circulate with the Danish ones. What shocks me most in this whole thing, which is already enough to make me despair for all of humanity, is the idea of a supposedly devout imam drawing a picture of Muhammad (S) having sex with a camel in order to blame that on Denmark. How deranged do you have to be to do something like that? Is Islam getting anywhere by this?

Truly religious people are secure in their own beliefs and don't fear free speech. It’s mostly Islami