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