A Different Drummer

Nothing to see here, people....Keep on moving...

This blog is currently number 1 on google search results for "amazing cock" - thanks to the title of this post, I presume, but you never know how efficient the rumor mill is these days...

Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa believes in dialogue with extremists...up to a certain point:

“As long as they are not armed and threatening the population, there is hope to have dialogue.....If terrorists have taken up arms, there is no recourse but to kill them. This is clear.”

This is one of the coolest things I have heard an Islamic leader say in a long time.

My best effort at growing an epic Jim Morrison style beard finished on Friday with a proper Cairo-style shaving, complete with threading, an old-timey shave with a straight razor and layer after layer of oils and creams and steam treatment. This isn't a beauty salon experience I'm talking about, this was a typical Cairo street barber - for such a masculine culture, Egyptian men sure do put an emphasis on extensive facial care.

The images tell the story of a man saying farewell to an old friend:


A close-up, just so you know what we are dealing with here...



It begins - apprehension is the name of the game...



A Muslim Brotherhood style beard is approaching....



If I walked out of the barber like this, I probably would have been arrested....



Going for Abe Lincoln chic...



Naked, vulnerable, powerless.......Goodbye, old friend. We will meet again.

Egypt's parliament passed the proposed constitutional reforms (discussed below) late last night. This morning, they announced that there will be a referendum on the changes.....in six frigging days time:

"CAIRO, March 20 (Reuters) - Egypt said on Tuesday it will hold a referendum on March 26 on constitutional amendments billed by the government as reforms but regarded by opponents as an attempt to entrench the ruling party's grip on power.

The amendments, which were pushed through parliament on Monday but must be approved in a popular vote, include an anti-terrorism clause that appears to enshrine sweeping police powers of arrest and surveillance in the constitution.

"The referendum will take place on Monday, March 26, 2007," Egypt's cabinet said in a statement, citing a decree from President Hosni Mubarak.

The move to hold such a vote so soon after the amendments were passed in parliament infuriated opponents of the changes, some of whom have yet to announce if they will boycott or contest the referendum."

Too unbelievable for words. I think some shit will go down in Cairo this week....

Amnesty International has described the current batch of Egyptian constitutional amendments being put through the parliament as "the most serious undermining of human rights safeguards in Egypt since the state of emergency was re-imposed in 1981."

In case that wasnt clear enough, they also said that the amendments will "enrich the long-standing system of abuse under Egypt's state of emergency powers and give the misuse of those powers a bogus legitimacy."

Luckily, the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit addressed these concerns in a thoughtful way, explaining how such worries are overblown and misguided. He released a statement explaining that "Non-Egyptians do not have the right even to merely give their opinions about an issue that is considered at the heart of the country's internal matters,"

Well, its good that we have explained...Here I was mistakenly thinking that the London-based Amnesty had the right to express their opinions about whatever they wanted. Thanks for clearing that up, Ahmed.

I got some interesting responses to my post below, thanks to some links from higher powers. A bunch of it was just crazy talk ("Large parts of English and European cities look a lot like Islamabad", or the even more hyperventilative "In 10 years, France, Germany, Italy, Holland and others may have large Islamist blocs controlling the government, and it will be impossible to control gangs of Muslim ruffians who seek to impose Sharia law"). Do these people ever actually leave their houses and look at the world around them?

There was one pretty solid theme coming through that I did want to write more about though - and that was the idea that although the threat is indeed relatively small, the chance of a nuclear armed terror attack makes it much more imminent and civilisation-threatening.

The risk here is obvious. And I totally agree with the assessment of the risk - I just don't think that the appropriate response to the risk is freaking out about existential threats to our civilisation. It seems like a concerted effort by security services (including literally tracking every single nuclear weapon in the world - if that isn't being done already) would be enough to deal with the problem.

There is also a few specific questions that I have about the terrorists-with-nukes assumption. Anybody who knows more about this, I'd love to hear your responses:

- Isn't it really easy to track nuclear weapons? I remember reading that they have a very distinctive "signature" that satellite sensing can easily spot - meaning that movements of live nuclear weapons around the world is almost certainly being monitored to a far greater degree than we think.

- Nuclear weapons, once exploded, also have a distinctive "signature" that can trace them back to their country of origin. If it is clear to nuclear countries that a bomb from their country will be responded to with the same total destruction - whether or not is it launched by their own armies or by random terrorist groups - then shouldn't the conventional idea of nuclear deterrence still work?

- Terrorist groups aren't very good at what they do. Everyone knows a hundred different ways that a well organised group of 100 homocidal bastards could wreak chaos, death and havoc on any country they choose. Why hasn't this happened? A good chunk of this must be down to sheer incompetence on behalf of terrorist groups. The obvious question is: Is there a terrorist organisation who have their shit together enough to pull off something this big without being caught in the process?

Despite how much we all seem to have collectively learned from the Iraq disaster, it still seems to be a hallmark of the self-appointed reasonable, grown-up thinkers that in order to be serious, one must realise the epic, imminent threat represented by militant Islam.

Today, Andrew Sullivan linked approvingly to this question posed by writer Thomas Mallon:

"Are American writers, artists, and thinkers truly prepared to admit that Islamofascism is a real, and even imminent, threat to everything they are accustomed to thinking, saying, and creating?"

This gives way to much credit to militant Islamists, and way to little credit to the human spirit and western civilisation.

So how big is the threat? For me, it just isn't that big. Islamic terrorists, if they are lucky, will manage a couple of medium profile bombings of tourist sites each year, and maybe something larger (New York, London, Madrid) every few years. This sucks, and our security services should relentlessly hunt down these people and take them out of the game. But is it really that much of a threat to the world?

Our societies, cultures and economies are just too strong to be even mildly shaken by this lame bullshit. Just because some gaggle of religious lunatics manages to kill a bunch of westerners once every 6 months, does anyone really believe that "everything we are accustomed to thinking, saying and creating" is under threat? I call bullshit.

We are SO going to beat these freaks. It will just take some time and some work. A bigger threat to our way of life and cultural tradition will come from the fear of an everpresent, invisible, existential enemy that has the power to destroy our entire civilisation. Believing in that kind of stuff makes people act crazy, as the rise of both neoconservatism and militant Islam have both taught us.

UPDATE: Some interesting comments on this post - my response is above...

Although I am probably an expatriate according to the dictionary definition of the word, I am far from being an expat as it is commonly understood - and I am proud of that fact. It's shit like the mail below that reinforces this belief for me....

On the CairoScholars yahoo group - a mailing list where foreigners in Cairo advertise apartments for share, sell secondhand stuff, find Arabic teachers etc - a person employed in the Swiss embassy in Cairo - obviously earning comfortably decent money in Euro/US$ terms - put out this advertisement:

"I am looking for a reliable housekeeper to work in Heliopolis. The working time is Su-Thu from 11 am to about 6pm so that someone will be at home and receive the two schoolchildren with a warm meal when they come back from school. The duties include cleaning, light house work, cooking and supervising two children 9 and 10 years old until I come home from work. Salary LE 550."

The poster later confirmed, when asked, that this is a monthly salary. For those not familiar, 550 Egyptian pounds equals about US$95 per month. For a 35 hour-per-week job of cooking, cleaning and child minding.

This is sick and wrong. This well paid Swiss diplo-weirdo wants to pay their maid 67 cents an hour.

I have resisted long and hard - erroneously associating Facebook with the other myriad of garbage websites that people are constantly spam-viting me to join. After being convinced of the actual decency of Facebook - and the fact that every-fuckin-person I have ever met seems to be on there, I am now a Facebook denizen.

I can now be habitually stalked and ruin my career with incriminating photo's just like all the other great minds of my generation. Here's my profile, if anybody wants to be friends or whatever you kids call it these days...

My self-interested recommended reading for everybody - two articles written by a promising young writer named....Tom Gara

I have two pieces published this month, check them out: An analysis of the war for talent in Egypt (in Business Today) and a preview of "The Fire of Anatolia", an epic Riverdance style Turkish production that has apparently taken the world by storm and is coming to Cairo at the end of the month. Enjoy!

I got tagged over email with the "Ten Weird Things..." meme, and I thought I might as well put the reply up for all to see. Anyone who wants to do their own, leave the link in comments.

---------------------
1. I cannot sit still when talking on the phone - I need to get up and pace backwards and forward. This goes for landlines and mobiles.

2. I have never, ever, purchased a towel.

3. My passport is so fucked that I was almost denied entry into Portugal last week - it has been rapidly deteriorating for about 6 months but i just can't afford to replace it. I can see a seriously unpleasant passport-related incident going down in the near future...

4. I always keep my eyes open when I am kissing - which I thought was normal but is apparently quite weird.

5. I wear odd socks every day, without exception.

6. I recently found out that for the 18 months that I have lived in Egypt, I have been using an incredibly innapropriate Arabic expression all the time, thinking that it is normal. Basically, I have been calling men - taxi drivers, shopkeepers, doormen etc - the equivelant of "my darling" or perhaps "sweetheart". I thought it meant "my friend". None of them have ever complained or told me of the error of my ways....

7. My current beard is the largest beard I have ever grown, and it may be the largest beard that I will ever have. Last week we had a test where i wanted to see how many cigarettes I could hold in the confines of my beard. I got about 20 in there before we ran out of cigarettes.

8. I have never been in a fight, or anything even approaching something close to a fight. I have never thrown a punch. My lack of fighting instinct is massive, and I would probably get my ass kicked by a 15 year old girl if she knew how to rumble.

9. I am really good at untying knots, and quite enjoy the challenge of dealing with a particularly complicated one. I am also really good at rotating couches and furniture in order to get it through narrow doorways - a legacy of moving house so much I guess.

9. I can watch terrible graphical depictions of violence, cruelty, rape, gore etc in film - but I always look away when someone injects drugs. I actually feel slightly queasy even thinking about it right now...

10. When I was a little kid, I was given a piece of grapefruit to eat - it was horribly bitter and sour for my immature little-kid palate, and I spat it out in disgust. At the same time, someone in the room said the word "Mango" as part of a different conversation. This primeval binding of unrelated word and taste fixed itself in my consciousness. I refused to try mango again until I was 17, thinking it was this disgusting sour bitter demon fruit. Ironically, by the age of 15 or so, I was happily eating grapefruit, which I thought was delicious.

The Washington Post has an interesting profile of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian/Dutch "refugee" in America. I agree with her on a lot of things - but I disagree with Ali on so many levels it is difficult to know where to start. Regardless, she is certainly a figure we will keep hearing from for a long time to come.

A central notion is that she is "courageous". I'm not so sure that is the case. I don't think it takes courage to do what she does - I think it takes a shrewd sense of political judgement and a pragmatic ability to position yourself among the enemies of your enemies. Being a female ex-Muslim who hates Islam is no more courageous than being an ex-homosexual who hates homosexuals, or being a reformed weed smoker who hates pot-heads etc.

I guess the amount of violence directed toward outspoken anti-Islamic types is much higher (you don't heard of many gay groups ordering death on those who insult homosexuality) - but then the rewards of being an anti-Islamic bigot are also much higher - look at Ali, who got elected to the Dutch parliament, and is now sitting pretty with practically guaranteed US citizenship and a fellowship at the cushy American Enterprise Institute.

Anyhow, the profile is interesting, and worth a read. I'd like the read her new book "Infidel", but I doubt it will be making it to Cairo bookstores anytime soon.

"In an updated travel warning issued before the Pessah holiday, the National Security Council's counterterrorism division called on Israelis to immediately leave Jordan and Egypt, especially Sinai, because of concrete threats.

In addition to Jordan and Egypt, the other countries where Israelis were called upon to leave immediately were Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iran, Kashmir in northern India, Mindanao in the southern Philippines and Chechnya in southern Russia.....

The countries with the next highest level of warning - where Israelis were called upon to 'avoid visiting and leave the country as soon as possible' - were Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, northern Nigeria and southern Thailand." (Jerusalem Post)

I just test drove one of these little sweethearts through the frigging perfect scenery of Sintra in Portugal. I don't think it gets much better than this...

First, the animal rights weirdo gets schooled by KFC employees.

Now, a Singaporean pop star and her obviously lame-o managers get absolutely nailed Cairo-style trying to shoot a video here. Too funny:

"LOCAL singer Stefanie Sun did not face guns or armed robbers in Egypt, as some stories had it.
Click to see larger image....she and a film crew - there to shoot two music videos - did lose more than US$10,000 ($15,000) to a mystery man in Cairo.

Mr Chen said that the money had been paid to a 'stranger who claimed he had government connections' and had reportedly turned up uninvited with the local guide.....The man then allegedly demanded 'payment' every few hours as the crew moved from location to location for filming. Even Stefanie, 29, ended up charging US$3,500 ($5,348) to her card, the singer's father told Lianhe Wanbao."

There is something about South-East Asians in Cairo, they just get the best of bad Cairo treatment. I guess looking tiny and vulnerable is one factor - but then being so unbelievably passive and sucker-like as to actually fall for it as well. I can't imagine Germans or Americans getting suckered into paying thousands of dollars into a mobile credit card machine many times thoughout a single day just because some sketchy Egyptian tells them they have to.