The "Hala Mustafa" case uncovers the hypocrisy of the Egyptian media establishment

Here's how the story goes: Hala Mustafa, long time journalist and editor-in-chief of the 'Democracy' review issued by Al-Ahram - the chief government mouthpiece - meets with the Israeli ambassador, Shalom Cohen (can his name be any more caricaturally Israeli?:) for a routine discussion - about organising a panel discussion with Egyptian and Israeli academics, on the peace process or what have you. A routine, organisational meeting.

Later that day, a newspaper from the same publishing house publishes with sensationalist tones that this meeting took place - great reporting really, their reporter probably just bumped into the man in the restroom - presenting it as a treason of sort. 'Normalization', of course, is the big stinky accusation.

Since then - that was a couple of weeks ago - the question has galvanised the media and angered the public, offering Hala Mustafa as the scapegoat for popular anger. She's been defending herself quite valiantly, though, to the grief of many of her detractors who were expecting an apology/resignation/etc.

There have been calls to suspend her, and expel her from the powerful Egyptian Journalists Syndicate; the Syndicate is actually referring her to its ethics committee. Her hearing is today, Tuesday the 29th.



My analysis of the situation goes through putting together those few facts. Walk with me, if you will:


- It is not the first such meeting. As a matter of fact, even the hypocrite-in-chief editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram, Abdel-Menem Said, has met the same ambassador, as well as his predecessor, several times in his Al-Ahram office.

- It was anything but a secret meeting: planned several days in advance, building secured as is the case with high-profile visits, etc. There was really no whistle to blow.

- The meeting was actually organised via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Which means that, if some are claiming that Al-Ahram is an independent organisation - which it is anything but - the State is very much involved in the meeting.

- Hala Mustafa has been at odds with other journalists before. Vehemently. See the final few lines of this article from Al-Masry El Youm, 26 December 2008:
"Hala strongly criticized the Egyptian mass-media, as she underlined the need for a revision after the establishment of numerous private newspapers and channels, which have gone far beyond reasonable limits of ethics and morals in many practices, political or otherwise".

- Confirming the above impression, notice that the report was first filed in Al-Ahram al Masa2y (Al Ahram Evening edition). As Hala Mustafa said in a television interview a few days ago, "there's a bit of professional courtesy, at least within the same organisation" that ought to prevent such a backstab. The Masa2y person must have been holding quite a grudge.

- Despite being an active member of the National Democratic Party - and being a member of the 'Policies committee', inner-sanctum of the party, under Gamal Mubarak's direct supervision - She's also had issues with the NDP, quitting a some point, before making amends and joining again. Amends or not, there's always remaining bad blood.

- Her boss, Abdel Menem Said, who is supposed be a member of various peace and coexistence organisations - Copenhagen group, etc. - has refused to meet her for the past year. Talk about a great work environment.

- With Farouk Hosni's dismal's failure at the UNESCO elections, the 'Jewish cabal' is being blamed for lobbying against him (it's obviously anyone's fault but his own). Anything or anyone that is remotely connected to them will therefore be used a catharsis for official, media, and influencable popular rage.


My conclusion? It's a massive exercice in score settling, of scapegoating, where an intelligent, professional woman is lynched to settle personal scores, and where disingenuous journalists can push up the bid of nationalism and anti-Israelism, individually or collectively.
It doesn't cost much to kick someone who's already floored.

More importantly, the journalistic mob did not measure the extent of the popular outrage they could generate. Fascinating story, both for what it uncovers about the journalistic profession in Egypt, but for the reactions it generated. Definitely worth a closer look.

I plan to follow up with a second post on thoughts regarding 'normalisation' in Egypt. Until then, check out this post I wrote a few months ago, at the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Egypt-Israel peace agreement.


I stand unequivocally with Dr. Hala Mustafa, both because she's a victim of a dishonest campaign, but more importantly because she has opinions of her own - and does not bend under pressure.

*CHANGE OF LOCATION! * Yes. It's happening. And you want to be there. Cairo Tweetup, Wed. 30 Sept, 8PM, @ Le Grillon

Time: Wednesday September 30th, 8 pm. (and that doesn't mean "come fashionably late at 10 pm". If you do come at 10 pm we'll still be there but you'd have missed 2 awesome hours. Tab 3ala eih? :)

Location has changed!: Le Grillon. Why? Because it's so downtown-kitschy, it had to be there. Used to be a hangout for famous Egyptian leftists and intellectuals. We'll be at the 'garden'.

☛ 8 Qasr El Nil St., off Talaat Harb Square, right next to the Qasr El Nil theatre. There's a big sign on the street (a large red one, I believe), so you Downtown, Cairo.

(we had to change from Cafe Riche - sorry 'bout that - because apparently an entire aisle of the place is out of service, so a large group at the bar would've been too much for them to handle.)

What to expect: Friendly people who are as keen as you on meeting the interesting folks behind the 140-characters-or-less. And Cairo being a village, you'll probably recognise a few faces too.

Suggested topics of discussion may include current events, the new season of Gossip Girl, and the Americano-Zionisto-Bloggero-conspiracy on Farouk Hosni. Obviously.
Talking about the weather and mosalsalat Ramadan is discouraged. El ra7ma 7elwa.

How many people we are expecting: Given that it's the first even of its kind, and knowing that many people have already confirmed they're coming, we estimate the attendance to... hmm... we don't have the slightest freaking idea.

Yep, sounds about right.

And that's part of the fun! This said, you are STRONGLY encouraged to let us know whether you're (probably) coming (by leaving a comment, email, or on twitter), just so we can get a rough estimate of whether Cafe Riche will be adequate (or whether we need to relocate to the Cairo stadium or something.)


What to bring: Yourself, other Twitterers who are ambivalent about coming :) and money for your drinks. We love you and all but no open bar this time.

و الحاضر يعلم الغايب!! Yalla!

Cairo, we'll see you in a few days.

Qaddhafi out of luck, from the UN to Wikipedia

Poor Muammar El-Qaddhafi.

Not only has he been forbidden from erecting his tent in New York - twice, first because of stupid locals then because of petty officials looking for their minute of fame - but apparently not everyone liked his speech to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday.

Why wouldn't they really? He only exceeded the 15-minute limit on speeches by a mere... oh, 81 minutes?

Having been introduced by his Minister of Foreign Affairs who happens to chair UNGA this month, he must've thought he was addressing his own docile population, which is rather coerced to listen and clap to anything he says...

Qaddhafi spoke for a full ninety-six minutes, during which he asked for inquiry in the Kennedy assassination, called for the establishment of Isratine, and asked for 7.77 trillion dollars in compensations for the colonisation of Africa.

But I don't what was it that ticked an anonymous user to edit his Wikipedia page, changing the Libyan leader's name in Arabic from "Muammar Al-Qaddhafi معمر القذافـي" to "DOG كلب".
Petty, but oh so ridiculous!

Someone corrected it promptly of course, but your favourite blog has a screen shot of the before and after the edit:

He did say ONE interesting thing. His (very clumsily formulated) remarks on the relationship between the GA and the SC. I also happen to agree this relationship to be totally dysfunctional - in a word, the UNGA, with its one-country one-vote system, is as close to a global democracy as we're going to get; UNSC, with its restricted membership and veto powers, is its antithesis.
As such, a necessary item in the reform of the UN will be to redefine this institutional relationship.

But when he called to rename the Security Council as "Terror Council", Qaddhafi didn't help much.

(HT: @TaraLSF)

Meet your fellow twitterers - It's the Cairo Tweetup!

Update 2: We have a date and location!
It's tentative though, so your thoughts and feedback are very much welcome!

--> Wednesday 30 September, around 7 or 8 pm, at Cafe Riche, downtown Cairo. We love this location - so historic, so complex, so... Cairo! - and, if you don't know it already, we hope you will too.


Update 1: Apparently some people are attempting to put together a parallel event and don't seem willing to discuss a merger of both events - eh. C'est la vie. :) We're still trying though. We'll keep you posted as to how things work out.

---------------


Cairo-based twitterers -

You follow their tweets, you have long (well, 140-characters-based) conversations about politics, arts, or bashing Ahmed El Fishawi.

They're your favourite commentators, journalists, or opinionated buttheads.

Actually, they're the friends you've never met.

How about actually meeting them?


In comes the Cairo Tweetup! Come over, and meet other Cairo-based twitterers over a drink somewhere.
How does that sound?

Where: I'm thinking in a laid-back coffee shop somewhere. Or perhaps at a park - say, Azhar park? - if we decide on a day tweetup.

When: Sometime in the next couple of weeks.

What do you think? Let me know!! Leave a comment, email me, or obviously, Tweet me @TravellerW!

Let's make this happen, people!!!

Egypt's TWO middle classes

I often joke that Egypt is one of the very few countries where you may see, at a busy traffic light, a Porsche Cayenne angrily honking at a donkey cart that stubbornly won’t budge.
Yet my story isn’t about the driver of the Porsche, nor of the donkey cart: it’s about all those in between.

Much ink has been spilt depicting the erosion of Egypt’s middle class. While the poverty statistics are indeed increasing, with recent numbers putting 40% of the Egyptian society below the poverty line, this ‘erosion’ is impossible by construct - there will always be, by design, a “middle class”.

Egypt doesn’t have one - it has two. I postulate that there are two parallel ‘middle classes’, that meet at times, with unclear boundaries and a reasonably crowded seam, but overall maintain distinct lives, activities, jobs, social lives and street hangouts.

The middle class is usually considered to be the productive motor of growth in a society.
In Egypt however, only half of that middle class is productive, integrated in the world economy, a necessary step in the transformation of the economy.

The socio-economic continuum is broken. To be more precise, the economic continuum is broken on social distinctions.

In case I didn't make sense in text, perhaps the graph makes it a little clearer?

Class, family background and prestige, social demeanor, socio-professional categories (that is, jobs), and even foreign languages; all contribute to drawing the social chasm.

Individual, but also cross-generational inertia, is a large part of it. Despite the convergence of incomes, inherited social order remains strong. In what I believe to be typical Arab fashion, who you are - to others, especially - is in no negligible part defined by what your parents do and are. ‘Ebn nas’ (‘son of good people’, roughly) is a simple but potent popular euphemism for what we will call “Sub-class A”. The other group will be “Sub-class B”.

You know which group we both belong to, right?

Interestingly, their perception of each other is primarily, and erroneously viewed through an economic lens: those are considered poorer, those are viewed as richer, and that’s enough to explain the differences. That incomes are roughly similar, that they both complain equally of inflation, that they are, too, a middle class - is a scenario neither group has considered, and they choose to generally ignore each other’s existence.

Let me put it up-front: perhaps one sub-class may indeed be marginally wealthier than the other. Don't take that for granted: after all, as I argued in a older post, that a large part of the money on the Egyptian market today came from the 'blue collar' underclass.

Either way, the difference cannot be fully explained by finances. The behavioural leap and lifestyle difference cannot be explained by a raise - proof is, most people from either class who experience and income shock (upwards or downwards) will maintain most of their lifestyle determinants, following a ‘more (or less) of the same’ rather than ‘as much of something else’.

How different are they?

They will meet sometimes. Because they both take public transportation. Because they both vacation inside Egypt rather than abroad, they both go to the same cinemas.

But they won’t watch the same films. Those will watch the Dustin Hoffman film, these the latest Heneidy flick.
Some will vacation in Alexandria, Hurghada or perhaps even Aswan - the others will consider the Sinai, the Oases, and of course Sharm. And they won't be buying in the same North coast villages either.

Their jobs, too, are often different.

Sub-category B will include blue collar professions. I know for a fact that my plumber or mechanic make more money than I do; but as an marketing exec for a frozen meats company told me, ‘in Cairo, the job category often takes precedence over income category’ - as such, I would be targeted by his advertisement campaign, but my plumber wouldn’t.
Middle and upper government officials, as well as the military and police higher ranks, could be in this category, despite their relatively good salaries.

Sub-category A will include most freelance and independent professionals - engineers, doctors, etc - as well as professors, journalists, etc. Few public sector workers overall here.

They send their children to different schools; one sub-class - let’s call it sub-class A - heavily favours private, though not too onerous schools with a partial or full curriculum in a foreign language, generally English and sometimes French or German. For the second group, different schools, probably still private, may be favoured.

Those kids will go to different places to play. Though driving the same cars, Group A will probably drop their kids in the social clubs they have inherited membership in (but couldn’t afford it on their own today) - Heliopolis, Gezeera, etc; while Group B might drop their children at the neighbourhood club, the mosque/church club, or to a cheaper private club they bought membership in - says, El-Shams.

They will probably both go to state university - but again, Group A is more likely to join the English department (if there is one), a little more expensive and guaranteeing a notch of selectivity.

They might both hold their weddings in the same hotels, or perhaps in the same Airforce club ballroom; the continuum break will only be more visible, as Extended Family A will include some elements of the higher classes, while Extended Family B of the lower ones.

While looking to invest in real estate, Group A’s kids will opt for a flat in El-Rehab, Madinati, and such other new sanitized neighbourhoods; Group B’s might tend to buy in a place like the 6th of October or in El-Obour - or buy the apartment their parents have rented for the past 30 years.

And so on.

Future prospects

Adherence to either of those sub-classes greatly determines the chances of social mobility. If you belong to class A, your chances or moving upwards are greater than if you belonged to class B; and you’d be less likely to fall in poverty than the latter.

More importantly, if starting from class B, an income increase won’t take you to class A - since you started being roughly their equal - and it won’t take you to the upper class, which is not on your segment of the continuum. Rather, you’ll still be in class B - only with a higher income. You may be an economic class above, but not a social one.


Not convinced yet? Here’s an extra exercise for you.

As you watch television, notice the advertisements (and with the Ramadan scheduling, you get on average 20 minutes per hour of ads - time it!) you’ll realise that a large part, if not most of those ads cater exclusively to one of the middle classes.

‘Madinati’ selling its 150,000 USD condos. A new private college in the suburbs of Cairo. Goldi's new 32'' flat screen. And so on.

Financial differentiation, you say? I beg to differ. Let’s look at cheap consumer goods too: even those adverts are geared towards the same sub-class. Coca-Cola ads I watched this week (the ones featuring Karim Abdel-Aziz) take place in a magnificent beachfront villa garden which is largely above the means of most Egyptians (and everyone they know).
The ultra-slick lobby of the bank advertising its credit cards isn’t the bank Group B gets its salary transferred to (assuming their workplace actually offers bank transfers).

And those two fancily dressed kids playing football mess up an ultra-modern kitchen which is then cleaned by their slim and fair-skinned mother, in an advert for a detergent.

All this is a far cry from the life of most Egyptians. To be more precise, it neither represents what group B lives, nor aspires to; for group A, it probably looks vaguely like the house of their rich uncle (but one they’ll probably never own themselves).

As long as we keep ignoring group B, as an important and potentially productive segment of society, we’re marginalizing a huge societal asset, for no good reason.

What we need is a national, inter-class reconciliation process, where both segments acknowledge each other and maybe, just maybe, start considering one-another for their individual worth rather than through a strict social order.

Angel sighting in Barcelona

The Angel had a fight with her boyfriend, apparently regarding the baby in the stroller.
It sounded like Czech. Do they speak Czech in heaven?

The argument ended with the boyfriend taking the baby and leaving the stroller.

An Angel with an empty stroller.



She sighed, and sat down to finish putting on her make-up. She does most of it at home, saving only the final touches for when she comes to work.

‘Work’ is that same place, night after night, on the sidewalk of a street choke-full of tourists in Barcelona. 'Work' begins around 10 pm or so, and ends when her feet beg for a break.

As she notices me, she winks with her long, golden eyelashes. I smile back.


Like a majestic butterfly in the making - a butterfly in a white-and-gold dress, she dons her wings.

No easy task, either. The straps are a little too tight.

But she does not fly. Instead, she takes off her green flip-flops, and stands on her pedestal that once was a fruit crate.

Her transformation is now complete. She smiles warmly at a little girl that stops in admiration.

I leave a euro in her plastic bucket, to thank her for indulging with my observation. She smiles and waves for me to come closer.

She offers me a piece of crystal, which turns into a vulgar piece of plastic as soon as it lands in my hand.

Apologies for the low-quality photos.. I need a new camera!

Jean-Sélim Kanaan, Hero. 1970-2003

I bought his book on the sixth anniversary of his death, a couple of weeks ago.
I read it last night, sipping a cappuccino at the Madrid airport. Quite a suhur (breakfast), I tell you.

It’s simple, naively written, and probably heavily edited. A couple of hours is all it takes to get through it.

And I probably wouldn’t have read it if it weren’t for its unique context. To me, at least, it is unique.

See the author is Egyptian-French, went to a French grande école, then to Harvard. Oh, and he worked for the UN. He speaks a bunch of languages and has lived all over the globe.

I know.

Jean-Sélim Kanaan was killed, among many others, on August 19th 2003, when a terrorist drove a truck-bomb into the United Nations building in Baghdad, in what was known as the Canal hotel bombing. He was 33, and he hadn’t met his three weeks-old son yet.

His book, “ma guerre à l’indifférence” he wrote in 2002 during his brief time in New York, working for UNOPS at headquarters (as a P-4 at age 31, by the way. Damn). A tale of his decade on the field and a critique of humanitarian work as it currently occurs.
He was obviously itching to head back to the field. The rest of the story we know.

I knew of him because of the bombing, but was captivated by his life after watching Génération ONU, a documentary on young UN officials in the field which featured Jean-Sélim.

Heavily committed to the mission of the UN, good looking, witty and with a good sense of humour, a bit of a poster boy for UN humanitarian missions. With a career on the rise, he seemed to be what many of us aspire to achieve.

And now, he’s dead. Absurd, isn’t it.

Yet despite his life being cut short, I will always remember that he had achieved what few ever succeed in reaching: to be remembered, for what he had done, not for what happened to him.

Jean-Sélim was, and will remain an inspiration.