I have been meaning to sit down and write this for a couple of days. I just returned from a week in Cairo and Alexandria. A so-called “non-combatant” area of Greater Islam.
This is what I saw.
Over and over and over and over again. On the TV. 10 stations at least. Endlessly preaching an end to the cultural and economic imperialism of the west. 24/7. I know. I was up most nights with my usual serious case of jet lag. 24/7. Bet on it. Imagine the worst AND the best southern U.S. fundamentalist preachers backed up by a over a billion and a half Muslims with guns, WMDs and nothing much left to lose.
And get fucking scared.
Read on if you have the courage.
Read on if you dare.
This is also what I saw.
And this.
Cairo was the single dirtiest place that I have ever seen. And I have seen Haiti and India as well. No comparison. It’s like they have just given up trying to throw out the detritus of their lives. They just toss it in a lot or on the roof of their building and fuggedaboudit. Like they don’t expect to make it far enough for the trash to matter. No trash or pollution in Paradise, after all, and that’s what’s next if the shit goes much further in the direction it’s now headed.
Why bother?
And this.
And this.
(UNBELIEVABLE pollution!!!)
And this.
Sullen, low-level and badly trained police EVERYWHERE.
City police.
Military police.
Tourism police.
Antiquities police.
All armed with automatic weapons; many standing alone in the middle of residential and commercial streets behind a steel body shield as the endless line of belching, polluted old cars shit on past them
And of course…this.
The entrance to the Cairo Marriott Hotel.
On an isolated and well-armed island in the middle of the Nile.
Where we…a band of 20 or so mixed race American jazz musicians, many of us barely up from the streets…were sequestered and herded for an entire week by four Glock-carrying Tourism Police plainsclothesmen and a tour guide who blithely ignored the 17 million NOT-so-rich-to-fucking-poor Cairenes and the many billboards showing Mubarak’s sleazy face and his “military triumphs” in heroic swaths of multi-colored detail while she blathered on about the many officially condoned points of interest that maybe some 70-year old Topeka tourists might find of interest.
Gottleib wrote an article recently.“Our Nation is at War”. In it he mocked the positions of Obama (and by extension, the other presidential candidates)
Regarding that statement, he wrote:
“Our Nation is at War” The first thing out of Obama’s mouth. A lie. A meme meant to perpetuate the rule of the military-industrial-congressional-media-complex.
I love ya, gottleib, and indeed that statement IS a meme that perpetuates the rule of the military-industrial complex here in the U.S.
The PermaGov, as I like to call it.
But here’s the rub.
It is a TRUE meme.
No way around it.
Them injuns DO have repeatin’ rifles, podna. And they are AFTER OUR MORTAL ASSES.
Bet on it.
We cannot undo the sorry history of European and American colonialism. All we can do is try to reform within and simultaneously protect ourselves from our enemies until we convince them that we are indeed backing offa their feed trough as fast as we can manage to do so. If we are successful…and Obama offers the only practical hope regarding those ideas that has yet surfaced in this pivotal year…we may avoid nuclear terrorist war.
And if we are not…all hell’s going to break loose.
Bet on that as well.
In Cairo alone there are 18 million people. Maybe more, because I cannot IMAGINE an accurate census being taken in that mess of a city. And I will bet you that 17 million of them are living in conditions that make our worst ghettoes look like country clubs.
Egypt adds one million to its population EVERY 10 MONTHS!!!
Yup.
That’s right.
And that’s one of the so-called “good”…read militarily, police state-controlled…Islamic countries.
What do YOU think is going to happen?
When I left the U.S. a couple of weeks ago I was fairly innocent regarding this situation. I thought Egypt would be more like South/Central/Caribbean America with an Arabic accent. Lots of mañana, a good groove, and a basically positive attitude inside of the boundaries imposed by economic imperialism.
Like…”We’ll get ’em off our backs eventually. Meanwhile…let us PARTY a little.”
Ain’t so, gottlieb.
It just ain’t so.
Although every Egyptian that I met was warm, intelligent and very accepting of our music and our American identity, I was not ALLOWED to meet the real people. The scuffling ones. The OTHER 17 million. But I saw their faces. NO smiles. Serious as death. I saw them look up into the bus of privilege in which we were riding through Cairo with faces like tombs. No smiles. More like Fallujah than the Arabian Nights of Scherezade or a Cuban crowd all rhumbas and deep into clavé.
I give Cairo maybe a year or two or three if nothing changes. It IS an efficiently run police state as it now stands, and the amount of Western money being poured into keeping it that way is astronomical..
But then…Ka-BOOM!!!
Bet on it.
Obama says that he will meet with leaders of hostile states on a no-preconditions basis?
Hillary Clinton says no, it’s going to be business as usual? Tortoise-paced so-called “diplomacy”? Just like the last 70 years?
Obama on that alone.
Time to get a move on.
Before it’s too late.
Fucking BET on it.
One way or another…they’re coming.
And they are NOT feeling particularly…open…to our blandishments about future luxury and a Plymouth in every garage.
Bet on THAT as well.
And wake the fuck up.
If we do not make SOME changes…it’s endgame for us all.
No trash in Paradise…
Do you think that’s where YOU are headed?
If not…better get on it, even if the effort’s not perfect.
Or else.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
It’s nasty out there, folks.
Nasty.
Bet on it.
Gotta mind our OWN asses too, y’know.
Bet on it.
You bet your life and the lives of your loved ones.
Place your bets.
Obama or Clinton.
No other bets will be accepted this time around.
That’s the game the house is running.
Sorry to bring the news.
Later…
AG
why do they hate us? They have it so good. Abject poverty and radical Islam. So many wonderful choices. Lotta fun being Egyptian. We are allied with Mubarak’s government and we give him billions. They have benefited so much from that money and peace with Israel. Was their a down side your not showing us?
?????
Speak plainly, please.
I did.
Snark is SO lame in the face of these kinds of realities.
AG
Oh my apologies Arthur.
What do you suggest? might the money you spent running around the world and staying in fancy hotels have been better spent here feeding the The Children of Gaza?
The money I MADE will go to feed me.
I need it to live.
For real.
If enough people in the the U.S. paid attention to real music and real musicians instead of to overdubbed, no-talent assholes maybe I could refuse to waste money and energy running areound the world trying to make enough to live.
What do YOU listen to?
Go to hell.
AG
I saw you recently switched to Obama
because of his taste in music.
Your real groovy
a cool cat
class act
deep
Music is deeper than ALL political palaver.
Real music.
Deeper than you go, on the evidence of this shallow. snarky little jibe.
Go away and play somewhere else. I’ve got work to do.
AG
So we really should be adding up all the aid money we give to Egypt and put it in the “Israel” column, as we’re buying protection for Israel by keeping Egypt repressed via Mubarak and his police state. Yes?
Yes There is obviously no benefit to the people Egypt. I’m surprised Arthur’s tour guides let him take those pictures. Mubarak doesn’t get 90% of the vote because its a free and open society.
They hate us because we support Israel and hold all muslims accountable for the desperate acts of a few. Israel does the same thing with the Palestinians. The whole thing is inhumane. They have plenty of reason to hate.
making the same mistake as in Paskistan; banking on Musharaff.
both Egypt and Pakistan -two lit fuses that, as AG coined, will go Ka-BOOM
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Saudi money has sponsored mosques which promote extremist views. The exact number of mosques which have been established by the Saudi administration is not known. In 2002, the Saudi Embassy in Washington proclaimed that it had established 210 Islamic centers in Europe, North and South America, Australia, and Asia.
King Fahd was said to have personally funded mosques in Toronto, Buenos Aires, the Maldives, N’djamena, and Edinburgh, as well as the giant King Fahd Islamic Center in Malaga, Spain. In addition to these officially funded mosques, a host of others exist, funded by Saudi charities and the zakat of Saudi businessmen.
Radical Islam in The Netherlands
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Those and thousands like them are easily available on the web.
I just chose the first ones that came to hand.
They would have let me take pictures, of course. the shit is right out there in plain view. Nobody’s trying to hide it. They really just don’t give much of a fuck as long as no one is shooting at them. I just don’t bring a camera when I travel because fussing with one stops me from taking in the whole deal, and NOT fussing with a camera but still taking pictures results in lousy pictures.
So it goes…
AG
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Supposedly lefties are more creative thinkers …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Jeez, that’s scary. It’s like a big festering boil, isn’t it?
It`s only one boil of many festering on the rump of humanity, & a symptom of the same disease. Next, is famine, locusts, white phosphorus, depleted uranium…
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Under ordinary circumstances Ayman al-Zawahri should have figured as yet another doctor in the infinite list of successful medics that characterizes his father’s extended family.
If Ayman’s uncle, Mohammed al-Zawahri, features among the country’s top dermatologists, another uncle is ex-dean of Cairo University’s school of medicine. There is that other relation who is senior executive of the Egyptian branch of German pharmaceutical giant Hoechst. And while a half dozen Zawahris practice medicine at al-Azhar, Islam’s oldest university, mention should also be made of the Zawahri surgeons and dentists in the Gulf region. And let’s not forget the Zawahri medics in the United States including a dentist, a GP, a consultant and a neurologist.
When he passed away on 9 August 1995, Ayman’s father, Dr. Mohammed-Rabie al-Zawahri was deputy chair of the department of akakeer–pharmacology at Cairo’s Ain Chams University. While two of his sons went to engineering school (one of them, Mohammed, was Ayman’s partner in Afghanistan and is today apprehended in Yemen), true to family tradition Ayman studied medicine as did two of his three sisters. Typically, they married MDs bringing the total list of successful medics belonging to the al-Zawahri clan to over 40.
As Ossama Bin Laden’s chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri is excluded from the above roll call. Instead, he features at the top of another list: America’s Most Wanted. In the quest of finding out why Ayman al-Zawahri changed course we inevitably come face to face with the two families which produced him: The al-Zawahris and the Azzams.
…
It was while Faisal Islamic Bank expanded its local operations during President Sadat’s Open Door’ economic policy in the late 1970s that Ayman al-Zawahri completed his graduate studies in Medicine. Sadat’s rapid “coca-cola-ization” of an undemocratic Egypt had started and colleges across the nation brimmed with social unrest. Islam became the countervailing force to what was perceived as a Judeo-Christian attempt to weaken Islamic beliefs and values. This was particularly true of the School of Medicine, an especially fertile ground for the activities of Islamists as opposed to other departments at Cairo University.
The expanding phenomenon of the hijab-headscarf and the proliferation of the perceived Islamic dress codes and conduct was seen at the time as a temporary whim that would go away if ignored. “Bad wind blowing from Iran” remarked certain pundits in the late 1970s, as the government continued to turn a blind eye.
Europe and hijab-headscarf
≈ Cross-posted from my diary as new creve coeur —
Qaida al-Jihad claims London bombings ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Yup.
Thanks, Oui.
AG
Why the fear, AG? After they kick us out, will the come across the North Atlantic to pursue us here?
Probably not.
The real danger, of course, is that we are at war with them right now, oppressing them right now, and the process of throwing out the West could well include some very unpleasant things happening HERE, right now. They certainly hate us enough. We’ve earned it, through great effort on our part.
Americans are, in total cluelessness, entering a killing zone. What could get us? Too many things. Monsanto. Famine. Lack of energy to run out life support. Climate change. Plague–both natural and engineered. The list goes on. Oh, yes–and blowback from our endless wars.
So you are right to fear. But what of it? We have earned our fate. If we choose to correct our behavior, belatedly, right now, we still have to accept that it may buy us nothing. That our fate may remain unchanged.
Correcting our behavior does not depend upon the chance of changing our fate.
Meanwhile, it is good to see clearly just where we are, even if where we are is very bad.
Thank you for your photos and your report.
Yes.
They will, one way or another.
They will come in economic drag.
They will come by blocking oil deliveries, one way or another.
They will come by helping insurgents to our south.
They have a SERIOUS hardon for us, gaianne.
They have accepted the “conversion by sword” aspects of Islam, these fundamentalists, and they are INDEED dangerous.
We have earned their hatred a hundredfold and in doing so we have created a fundamentalist enemy that is not going to go away once it is successful in freeing itself from our domination.
Bet on it.
Read Oui’s post on al-Awahiri.
Why the fear?
I do not want to see my son’s life crippled. I do not want to see America crippled. Too many good-hearted people here, people who made some mistakes due to the dominance of some VERY smart hustlers.
Hang the hustlers from the nearest tree and let’s start over.
That’s MY wish.
And that is the only way that we will hold this off wave of hatred short of nuking selected parts of the Islamic world.
Which would only be a typically short-term American solution.
Let us pray.
AG
And if they don’t come, the diseases festering under the surface, percolating in the filth, mutating to something just a tad more infectious, surely will.
AIDS (traced back to Congo, via Haiti) is just the opening act.
As you say, AG, bet on it.
Obama may be the Hail Mary pass for western civilization. God help us if there’s a fumble.
Arthur,
One of the best looks at the Middle East I’ve seen, in the raw.
Painful.
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Although, UAE is Bush’s Ally in WOT.
The Jebel Ali Golf Resort & Spa is situated approximately two kilometres from the trunk of The Palm Jebel Ali. This extraordinary man-made island in the shape of a date palm tree, will be the location for a variety of entertainment and residential complexes once it is completed. Next to The Palm Jebel Ali is Dubai Waterfront, dubbed the world’s largest waterfront development, which will feature a series of commercial and residential communities.
Only 25% of the multicultural 2.4 million people living in the UAE are citizens – or “nationals”, as they are known in local lingo. In Dubai they represent only 15%. No wonder Dubai boasts no fewer than 85 foreign private schools.
Dubai may be run like a huge corporation. But unlike a US multinational that delocalizes to profit from cheap labor, Dubai imports cheap labor in droves. The result is immigration without citizenship – a model that fascinates assorted American neo-cons and neo-liberal right-wingers, with the added bonus that unlike Mexicans and Central Americans in the US, immigrants to Dubai totally renounce their political rights on the altar of economic improvement. Neo-liberals refer to Dubai as proof that Islam is not incompatible with globalization.
UAE
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."This was a significant contribution. It’s always scary to me to hear the “ostriches” in my community. Even my dear neighbors get all their news from the (Fundy) church down the road. My father gets it from Rush.
These are people who think that “not speaking to” people like Raul Castro and countries like Iran is going to bring them around. Unfortunately, they are living in the pre-Euro days.
I can think of no solution except a thoughtful president with a middle name of Hussein. (It means absolutely nothing to him, but to the world will mean that he honored his father enough not to change it when he became an adult!)
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[Tamara Cofman Wittes] I’m in Doha for the 5th Annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum–my fourth year at this annual confab (organized by my fine colleagues in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution) that brings together Americans with Muslims from Nigeria to Malaysia and everywhere in between.
…
The most powerful explanation for the change is evident in the overwhelming fact that all anyone at this conference really wants to talk about is Barack Obama.
A friend from the Gulf tells me her young relative was so excited about the Democratic candidate that he tried to donate money over the Internet, as he’d heard so many young Americans were doing. Then he found out he had to be a U.S. citizen to do so. Another young woman, visiting from next-door Saudi Arabia, said that all her friends in Riyadh are “for Obama.” The symbolism of a major American presidential candidate with the middle name of Hussein, who went to elementary school in Indonesia, certainly speaks to Muslims abroad.
But more important is just the prospect of a refreshing shift in the the breeze off the Potomac. More than the changes in the region, it seems to be anticipated changes in Washington that are drawing the eyes of my Arab counterparts and giving the conference its unusually forward-looking tone.
≈ Cross-posted from — Friday News Bucket ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Yup.
Symbolism rules.
Tactics and plans may change with the wind, but symbols have real meaning.
AG
I have a great friend in France. I just sent her an Obama T-shirt for her child. They have hope for us yet. Do we?
But a statement that this man is comfortable in his own skin. As a potential politician, he could have changed his name long ago. But he honors his father (in his book, with honesty about some disappointments) and refuses to change his basic roots to please bigots.
Welcome home AG. Thank you from your eyewitness account. I always love hearing from the people who have seen it with their own eyes — those other than our politicians and our corporate media (who I don’t trust to report truly).
The ideal I learned when I was a boy. The “American Ideal” I was taught (although, almost certainly a myth — I learned much later) told me that we were a good people. A caring people. A great people.
That ideal lives. So, for me, anyway, and I bet for many (you — others), when we are confronted with the realities of the world beyond our borders. The poverty, alone. The violence caused by economics, politics, ethnicity, religion. I think my best instinct is — that my very wealthy country (though we’ve squandered so much of that wealth — real and ideological) should be doing something to raise the entire planet up.
I have always thought — quite simply — that there are more than enough resources in the world, to allow every human being on this planet with a safe, basic existence. Sufficient clean food, water, clothing and shelter. A reasonable medical care. A reasonable education. A chance to enjoy this life (arts, pursuits). If we harnessed mankind’s efforts and the planets resources to that sustainable end — I just do not believe we could allow the abject poverty that exists (and allows frightening conditions to persist) to continue.
Instead though, we have evolved as system that focuses on the enrichment of some countries over others. Some few beings over others, in ridiculous extremes.
Thanks again for the report. I am proud that you were an ambassador for our nation — even if it was a difficult place. I hope you gave some individuals joy with the music you played. And that they will tell their loved ones — of a more pure American spirit.
Hope too, that our country will turn to its better nature — to begin to fight against these conditions — to become a friend to the world, and not an oppressor — if that is not too late.
(Was also going to talk about religion and overpopulation, but I’ve rambled enough).
Obama will be president for, at most, eight years.
How long to fix this problem?
Your pix give meaning to the cold, dry fact that Americans constitute 5% of the world population, but consume 25%of the world’s energy.
Thanks for the excellent blog. I find it sobering. I am not panicked or fearful, just very very sad that some of what you predict will come true. Jesus said, “The poor you will have with you always.” But nowhere does the Bible speak of the extreme level of the depth of hopelessness in poverty such as we see around the world in this new century. I am certain the severe desperation and anxiety existed in ancient times, but there were no holy jihadi salesmen around handing out blessings and suicide belts ancient times. Only in modernity can one person on foot have virtually unlimited killing power.
The creation of the suicide bomber did not originate with Islamic terrorism. It was born in the process of Japan losing Naval control in the Pacific Ocean near the end of World War II. At that time the Japanese called pilots who volunteered for these suicide missions kamikaze of “Divine Wind”.
The connection with the suicide bombers is not only religious, it is technological, i.e., one individual is carrying or has control of the explosive power to create massive destruction and death. The kamikaze used his airplane as a missile to sink or destroy an aircraft carrier or a battleship. A terrorist with a nuclear or C3 bomb on his/her person can inflict awesome destruction within a populated area. Human suicide bombers are a darkside component of this technological age and we can’t contain it!
(Question) If one was to raise a crop, so as to speak, of potential suicide bombers where would you be likely to find such a farm?
(Answer) In the ghettos, slums and refuge camps around the world. AG showed pictures of Cario slums, but world is filled with them. Name any country, India, Spain, Germany, France, America, Kenya, Brazil, etc and each nation has its own ghetto underclass problem.
A young adult living with his/her family under such grinding poverty conditions might willingly give up their life to receive enough money to take their family out of hunger and starvation. Many starving farmers in India sell their young daughters to sex trade thugs who routinely travel from the cities to the isolated countryside area looking for fresh flesh for their bordellos. The problem of poverty as being a prime source of potential suicide bombers is not coming it is already here.
The reason why wholesale recruiting has not started in the slums around the world is that those Islamic organizations using these jihadi tactics are highly concerned with purity and wish to recruit volunteers only from among its stock of male ethnic believers. But as it is with the nature of mankind, sooner or later non-Islamic interests will begin to be attracted to the idea of recruiting suicide bombers from poverty locations as a low risk terrorist tactic.
The saddest part of all is that no one will know when this onslaught of suicide bombers will begin its rein of global terror. Such confusion always winds up degenerating into full scale out and out warfare.
There is one solution and only one solution, and that is to clean up the poverty stricken areas. Reduce hopeless grinding poverty and thereby reduce the source of potential suicide bombers…
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Suicide bombers “recruited” from Baghdad mental institution. Best principle to follow: avoid a war by choice! Chuck Hagel said it very clearly about the Bush administration: “Greatest threat to U.S. security lies in the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border.”
The Lebanese success in this sphere was mostly in achieving respect; the group became a symbol of sacrifice and a source of inspiration for several organizations worldwide. In Sri Lanka, Turkey, Egypt, Chechnya and others, militants adopted and even improved on the suicide bombings of the Lebanese group.
The most prominent of these organizations was the LTTE, “The Tamil Tigers.”
A suicide attack killed former India Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, while he was on an election campaign tour in Madras on May 21, 1991. Then, in May 1993, President Primadassa of Sri Lanka, was killed by a suicide attacker, along with 22 other people. On Dec. 17, 1999, the organization attempted to assassinate Chandrika Kumaratunga, President of Sri Lanka, using a female suicide bomber who blew herself up at an election rally. The President was wounded but survived the attack.
O/T while searching for human suicides – India: ‘biological treadmill’ cause for 10,000 cotton growers to commit suicide
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."