Will everyone just calm down for a sec.... seventy-what??

Im really losing patience with the world's contemptuous attitude towards Libyan president, "the king of african kings", Muammar Gaddafi. He is neither more ruthless nor has he caused more damage to the world and its inhabitants than any other world leader- why does everyone resent him for at least being original? Even his face is entertaining. So he made a ridiculously long speech at the UN, who cares.
We're all happy to think he's some kind of devil when he receives back Abdel Baset al-Megrahi the blood thirsty terrorist, but its all fun and games for Italy to make use of his inhumane policies when they need to send back dozens of migrants on the brink of death. Italy's new deal with Libya wherein the former can send back anyone it doesnt want on its soil to Libya (where they will spend the rest of their days in unthinkable detention centers) is understandable, apparently, while receivig the Lockerbie terrorist to die in his home land after doing jail time is out of this world. If anyone could be described as "a sad commentary that he is granted presence in civilized society" its the assholes who would let 73 people die on a dinghy on the way to italy (including two pregnant women who were raped on the way). Please click here.

Abdulhakeem takes one for the team

Sometimes, every once in a while, or rarely than that, I try to comment on posts like this one. I think its more out of a feeling that I have to say something to protect from being reduced into spontaneous convulsions from sheer irritation.
I dont always know what to say, or where to start, and I have no moral feeling of intellectual responsibility to really make a valid point. but i cant just sit there convulsing, so here's what i said to the Vienna gate-keepers:
its funny when a new school shoot out happens no one calls it yet another "sudden columbine syndrome" or chronic murder disease, rather they try to understand what may have caused this act of anger. its a little too convenient that sporadic acts of seneless violence are only a real threat when a Muslim (and a convert, no less so it cant be a genetic prone-ness to violence) does it..and what, couldnt he be violent just because he's black? or is that political incorrect in this day and age...? On an unrelated note, did you know that the fastest growing rate of conversions in the U.s is African Americans turning to Islam? Better watch out.

My comment was duly ignored, of course. But really, what is that Vienna siege line?what new phase? what old war? im just so confused.

pocket full of bullets, pockets full of cash

does anyone else think its ****ed that the only country not expected to contribute anything to the reconstruction of gaza is the one that did all the gallavanting destruction to begin with?

Poof! No wait, he's still there...

Its hard living in Egypt to gather a coherent thought sometimes, because just as you give yourself a moment to complete a ponderance, or pontification, whatever you fancy, you're hit on the head with 12 other things that just make your head spin around.
Sinai for example, is a case in point, the relations between the security authorities and the widely acknowledge drug culture that runs amuck freely right behind each security check point has often caused to me to wonder how anything actually functions here, and what are the dynamics behind it.
But because the aforementioned idiosyncracy i just mentioned would require more of a dissertation and thesis than a blog entry ill limit myself to this little thing i noticed this morning (amongst 20,000 other thingies).
Reading Al Masry Al Youm this morning, I wondered more about the amusements and motivations of the Egyptian reader. Front Page, Top Right, Font Bold, a story about Ahmed Nazif. But did the largest post focus on the content of his speech? the fact that unemployment rate is a festering epidemic eating out the economic stability of Egypt? No, not really, surely it was mentioned of course, but right underneath the headline that starkly spat out "Nazif's Speech to the Shura council occurs during 4 Electricity Power Cuts" and then in smaller fonr "the government isnt worried about inflation and can get past the financial crisis"...
Perhaps it is indeed more fruitful to bemusingly chuckle at Nazif speeching in the dark (I assure you I couldnt hold it in either when i read the caption) than to poke holes in the conviction anyone actually has that the egyptian government (who cant ensure constant power supply for the prime minister) has any real reason to show no concern for our impending economic doom. tee-hee.

لا يا شيخ؟

نظيف: الحكومة تتحمل تكلفة إعادة بناء وترميم «الشوري» بالكامل

أمال كمان كان هيكون على حسابنا؟؟

Adding Insult to Injury

Now I'm not sure what bothers me more. No wait, I am sure. This bothers me more:

Not only did we see the dismal performance in putting out the fire, and the loss of the antique building, and the havoc created by police and officials trying to orchestrate the whole fiasco,but the efforts were directed more to repressing the opposition media from covering a very obvious disaster than to repressing the disaster itself and containing it. Once again, the police have no clear priorities, no clear mind and seem to comfort themselves using human punching bags whenever possible.

Al Masry Al Youm's Parliament correspondent, the official correspondent, who even has a press ID given from the shura council itself, was attacked by the police and his ID was torn. El Badeel, my favorite opposition paper at the moment was prohibited from issuing its paper today because the headlines claimed that "flames consume Ferry, contaminated blood, cancerous pesticides and Upper Egypt train files”. Instead they could only print their online version.

As for the state papers, the headline read "Mubarak closely follows the events of the fire and makes three phonecalls to Al Sharif"- who the fuck cares? They also, myteriously, counted ONE HUNDRED fire engines at the scene.

News flash to the news makers: the public is not blind, and most of us can count.

Liar, Liar, House on Fire

The fire that started in the Shura Council (Parliament) yesterday early in the evening (and went on for a tumultous nine hourse) may have started because of a short circuit, but the reason it went on for so long was doubtlessly the complete incompetence and total lack of crisis management displayed by the Egyptian "action" taking bodies. The fire spun out of control and destroyed this gorgeous 19th century building despite the fact that over 30 fire trucks and a helicopter were part of the so-called "rescue" effort. Thankfully, the flames didnt spread to the nearby Geographic Institute which houses ancient and rare documents. Not that anyone was concerned about that anyways, rather the area was sealed of (in a clumsy, hectic fervor) to protect the U.S, British and Canadian embassies that neighbor it. Of course, if it had been Suzanne Mubarak passing through Kasr El Aini street, you would have seen the most impeccable coordination skills at making sure that she whizzes through unobstructed, you would have witnessed precision, skill, fearlessess. But when its a fire with some government workers who happened to be working in vacation season we cant aim a house at a flame right.

I really feel safer than ever. So we cant put out a fire in our own parliament. The important people were apparently only effective in making "phonecalls"- for some reason the headlines on the state media keep telling us that Mubarak made three phonecalls, Ahmed Ezz called his buddies and Fathy Serour, though he couldnt be there himself because he was in his summer home outside of Cairo, was very concerned. Concerned enough to pick up a cell phone.

It really makes me wonder what would happen to us if we were caught in a building Fathy Serour didnt even care about. If this is how they "save" their power house, then I expect to be burnt to a dark crisp if im ever near a naked flame in Egypt.

Im going to think twice before even turning out my gas oven at home now.

40 trucks, 9 hours, and total failure. What a mess. What a complete fuck up.

Chew your qat quietly, please.

One Lebanese newspaper got it right when they caught the Yemenis, dreaming of Saudi Arabia. What a nightmarish thought, you say? Well, yes, apparently, the Yemenis are really exceeding themselves in the pursuit of being all around nightmarish people. Their latest acheivement being the election of a full fledged "promotion of virtue and prevention of vice committee" a la Saudi Arabia, complete with a police force and everything! Some of you might be more familiar with the concept as "النهى عن المنكر والامر بالمعروف"- but give anyone such unabated moral authority and watch them run around beating people to death for having alcohol, or forcing them to be burned in a school fire because they weren't dressed appropriately enough to be saved.

To know more about the Saudi religious police force (as opposed to all the raging secularism going on over there) check out the blog "Religious Policeman" dedicated to the lives of the schoolgirls who were lost in that fire.

In case you had more faith in the Yemen (because, of course, they are known for their triumphs in every field, particulary social justice) just take a looksie at what the committee has had to say already : "God intended women to be beautiful, and men to be attracted to women...if women reveal their beauty, men will be seduced and extramarital sex will occur. This will result in sexual chaos."

Not really sure what sexual chaos entails, but im sure Yemen already has it.

Also, they have vowed to disable all institutions which "wave war against God" like bars. Oh well, guess those crazy club hopping Sana'a nights are over.

Dear lord, I hope this disease isnt contagious.

Official Petition to Amend Economic Indicators

I'm convinced that what actually qualifies a first world country as such despite the inevitably arbitrary (and simultaneously calculated) nature of such a category- is not in reality how much poverty or dust or filth you have- but how convincing your "uppity" parts of town are. Sure there's some dirt in Paris (Ok, I'm pushing it but I saw some ugly mounds of cigarette butts I swear) but what matters is that the clean parts, the pretty parts, the rosy picture in convincingly rosy and you cant say shit about regardless of how well your critical minds deconstructs such "illusions". It's gorgeous, even with the passed out alcoholic and the crazy lady talking to the pigeons.

In Egypt for example, we are reaching a tipping point whereby even the hippest, million dollar real estate neighborhood is infested with filth, intolerably polluted, perpetually in decay and moulding over with the inescapable stench of corruption and all around general doom.

Of course, there are other indicators of quality of life other than the height of trash piles in the pretty streets in Maadi and Zamalek, such as

- how many prisoners the police take to electrocuting each day ?

- thethe ratio of covered : uncovered skin a woman can get away with without risking gang rape.

- Decibels of noise drilling into your brain at given moment

- Proportion of population wearing ALL STAR shoes (I never said the indicators were a good or bad thing)

- Quality and overall pleasantness of music streaming in the street at given moment

- Do people insist on decorating Mosques/Churches with florescent green lights to distract from the more attractive architecture?

- the answer to the question "Does McDonalds even TRY to accommodate your culture?" (Did you know that Mcdonalds serve shisha in Turkey? Outdoors)

"The storm of terrorism blows strong around us and our enemies lie in wait"

Well the second half of that sentence is certainly true. I havent heard of any terrorists around Egypt lately. Those were the profound words of Egyptian prime Minister Ahmed Nazif in parliament the other day when they decided to extend the Emergency Law for 2 more years.

I dont know which is worse: living under emergency law for two more years, as if the past 27 (million?) were not enough..or having to wait two more years to actually see what god forsaken stipulations actually make it onto the "counter terrorism" law that was supposed to replace emergency law this year. Actually, its a little ridiculous. They promised us a counter terrorism law, are we not good enough for one? Emergency laws are so out of fashion and all the other repressive, totalitarian states will think we're uncool. Lets not even ask the question of what it would take for us to actually operate under a "normal" or say, "constitutional" law. What are we, human or something?

Its interesting the Egyptian parliament, they announce this counter-terrorism bill, and everyone gets all worked up about it, we write press releases, civil society gets all antsy and submits recommendations and panics a little bit, the UN warns of the many violations of counter terrorism laws, and then all of a sudden- bam- emergency law again. Arbitrary detention, arrests without charges or warrants, torture without investigations, lack of privacy, exclusive authority to the military and executive branches of governement GALORE! Two more years of lawlessness just passed by law. Of course its justified, after all, we've had all that unrest and terrorist attacks and we've successfully cracked down on corruption and crime because of the exceptional stipulations of emergency law...erm, ...no wait a minute....that cant be it...

This is how we do it

The Egyptian Authorities always prepare for big, prestigious events, even if that preparation is questionable at best, and shortsighted, misguided and ludicrous at worst.
Currently, the authorities are preparting for The World Economic Forum scheduled to take place in Sharm El Sheikh at the end of the month. As security measures are tightened for the event- (because normally we're just so chill and relaxed about things)- they started deporting all kinds of manual and construction workers OUT of the entire South Sinai region as a whole.
Around 90% of the Southern Sinai (Dahab, Nuweiba, St.Katherines, Tora...) has been totally cleared from construction and other workers coming from other parts of the country to work. Business owners in Sinai, also found themselves staff-less in the middle of construction or peak tourism periods.

Once again Im struck by the irony: in order to prepare for a conference about ECONOMICS, talking about poverty, employment and productive growth- we directly resort to driving the rich out of business and rendering the poor unemployed.

Who Needs Apples?

I resisted posting anything about Facebook because I try to be…original? But I've come to accept that the world of Facebook is a never-ending fountain of foolishness and generally entertaining factoids (anecdotes of lesser status and importance than proper facts). My last such discovery was the Facebook group cleverly titled:

"Two Pages of Quran a Day Keep Jahannam Away"

I wonder. In this analogy is Jahannam some body's annoying cousin? Actually, is it an analogy at all or is there some footnote in the Quran that scholars didn’t notice in which there's a precise mathematical equation of how many lines of holy text you should read per diem to keep your soul safely out of eternal hell? Who is your target Facebook-er anyways with such a ludicrous group name? Is there an untapped niche of tormented Muslims somewhere who had been eating two apples a day everyday trying to shun doctors the whole time? Is now the time to reach that population and sway them unto the righteous path of Facebook grouping?

I won't lie to you, my questions remain largely unanswered.

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