The French blues

This winter in Paris has been - at least compared to its rather dreadful predecessors - surprisingly decadent, breezy, sunny and generally uplifting - at least compared to its British cousin. And yet, the French seems to have hardly noticed. While the whole population of Paris appears to plummet into a depressive, semi-suicidal state when rain and the mist envelope its uniform Haussmannian buildings, making the asphalted bricks reflect their distorted contours, this "doux hiver", the soft winter, has not served to lift up the spirits of the French out of the mist, "le brouillard de morosité".

No wonder. A few weeks ago, the Economist wrote of the Bleak Chic being the prevalent French mood in the air, and while many of my fellow compatriots might be tempted to equate the article with the usual spout of French bashing, it was hardly that. The Economist reported some quite factual information on the perception of the French themselves of their life. Notably, the French self report themselves as less happy as Ugandans and have the highest suicide rate in Western Europe, apart from Belgium and Switzerland.

As much as the latter might spell some bad news for the Belgians and the Swiss, one cannot help wonder if the suicide rate has been "helped" by the recent and much denied exodus of upper class French, taking the rest of their hard or less hard earned cash before the government decides to confiscate it. The government of Monsieur Hollande claims, quite laughably, that there is no such exodus as the number of Belgians applying for French citizenship is higher than the opposite. Perhaps Monsieur Hollande has forgotten that escaping France has nothing to do with citizenship, to which hoards of French exilees in Kensington happily residing in London without British citizenship and with a British umbrella are the most obvious testimony.

Indeed, the number of French in London is reported to be the highest of any city other in Paris. The French also hold many executive suit or at worst white collar posts in banking, fashion and many other sectors all over the world. Ironically, those international French, unlike the local French, do not appear either on the brink of depression or suicide. On the contrary, they seem to be living exceedingly well, having discovered the "vrai joie de vivre" outside of their native country, coming back to Paris with the same attitude as the Gulf Arabs visiting Lebanon: a place to spend their money and leave with a tingling recognition that this is a place to spend a week only.

The explanations for the French grumpiness exceptionalism are as plentiful as the grumpy people themselves. When confronted with the Economist article, some simply deny the French "malheur", others come up with the strangest of theories to explain their country. In my favourite coffee shop near Pantheon - the symbol of the might of the old France - a neighbourhood regular blamed it all on the media. The media in France, apparently, does not inspire confidence and does not give the French a feeling of being in charge of their political fate. That might be true, but then what shall be said of those smiley Americans whose TV sets (and Fox News in particular) regularly blast news of local violence, of government which was almost dissolved, and of US foreign policy which is losing its umph?

The fact that the range of political options are unsatisfying to the French is not surprising, given the notoriously low popularity rating of the current government led by the awkward at best, incompetent at worst, Monsieur Hollande, whose government has about committed all the cardinal sins in his short stint in the Elysee. There was the Finance Minister cracking down on the almost non-existent "riches!" with the bank account in Switzerland and the Justice Minister who wants to dismantle the legal profession to do justice herself, mostly against the whites. Finally, there is the President himself who appears to have no courage except, as it turns out, to cheat on the first lady, married to somebody else but living in the Elysee, replacing his previous partner who wanted him to give her the post of his prime minister, refused by Mr. Hollande's new first lady, who later discovered that he has found his entertainment elsewhere, prompting her to try to commit a suicide, causing further grief to the President.

If this long-winded explanation sounds excessively incestuous, it just might be reflecting the over-complicated French reality in this new brave world of ours. Perhaps there is reason for the French to be exasperated but it has little to do with our goofy President or the television. Sure enough, our politicians are incompetent and inbreeding. Sure enough, joining the Euro was a catastrophic mistake and the global financial crisis has not helped. Sure enough, immigration is an issue and inequalities are substantial. Sure enough, the glory of France's past and its role on the foreign policy arena, is not quite as before, save for a few francophone African countries who cannot seem to get their act together.

But is that really the reason for bemoaning life in France as being miserable? I think not. Social security is still one of the most generous in the world. Health care is still high quality and free. Education standards are still high and post secondary studies essentially free. Fashion is still leading globally. Those smiley Americans would do much to access these privileges, all absolutely taken for granted by the French as fundamental human rights, like toilet paper or salade nicoise. I am certain that if the Ugandans had access to the same benefits, they would self report themselves as the happiest human beings on this planet and also on Mars.

Foreigners see little reason to curb their enthusiasm for Paris specifically of France more generally. Tourists of all shapes and colours are still flocking to Paris as if was about to disappear in la Seine as Venise. Even in Venise, where the local inhabits (now numbering less than 50,000) to the great distress of many, a tourist - while a generally despised creature - can still get a warmer welcome than in Paris, where tourists are also plentiful, but hardly to the Venetian proportions. In Venice, a waiter at a local restaurant has offered to take a day off to show me around town and has facebook friended me immediately. A French waiter would have, in the same time proudly refused to modify the meal, forgot to bring the infamous "carafe d'eau" and shrugged his shoulders in exasperation at any other request.

No wonder the Japanese, who allegedly spend their lifetime saving for that coveted Alice in Wonderland style trip to the land of all luxury, have a special hotline at the embassy to enable a speedy evacuation for those traumatised by the miserable, rude French. No wonder a Lebanese friend looked at me with his eyes full of piety when I said I was ending my trip and returning to Paris. "Ah, good luck", he said solemnly, looking at me as if I was a toreador being sent away to tame a particularly feisty bull.

And maybe I was. Maybe that ideal of picture perfect Paris, that revered place that Japanese tourists spend their lifetimes saving to visit, that Moroccans come to test their French in its native environment, and where Americans come to look at the Eiffel Tower, only not to recognise it when standing in front of it, and where everyone is expected to chuckle as that taste that deliciously cruel fois gras, simply does not exist.

Instead, there are different Parises in Paris, just like different New Yorks in New York. Brooklyn has as much in common with Soho as Avenue Montaigne with Gare du Nord. In the urban chic, vegetarian, grassroots boutiques and restaurants of upper Marais, Victor Hugo would be pressed to find the usual Miserable French, complaining and pushing around in the christmas market, the metro and and just about everywhere else. The malaise seems not to have arrived there. The upper Marais, is ironically one of the most international places of the city, not in a sense of being most visited tourist destinations but in a sense of being populated by the most international French, surprisingly similar to their compatriots in New York or London.

It is one of those rare, anti mainstream edges of Paris areas that the shocked Japanese tourists, obsessed with buying as many Louis Vuitton bags as possible, have probably not visited. If they did, they would have traded a few overpriced bags for something that is extremely rare in France and on which the general malaise can be blamed much more than on the President or the television. And that something is called social cohesion, a feeling that we are not all out for ourselves, life wolves stranded in the forest in the middle of Siberia.

This feeling of life being a zero sum game of survival of the fittest, of everything happening to ME, and none of it being MY fault, is something that permeates many corners of Paris. The French individualism - strongly bordering, if not nested in - egoism is much to blame for the French malaise. It can explain the drivers that push ahead as if they were alone in the desert, the waiters that serve as if they hope it would be their last day on the job, and salespeople who are only too eager to announce that of course they don't have YOUR size!

That is perhaps why when the winter sun is strutting its rays on the sidewalks of Paris, the French don't think it is happening to them either and prefer to ignore it, hiding in their "brouillard de morosité", alone and proud of it. And that is also why Paris is a only a hypothetical picture perfect, that place that like that super smart but always distracted pupil in a class, is so close to perfection, but at the same time to failure. Paris is more like a date with a beautiful woman, whose glacial coldness is a turnoff, leaving both the lady and the prospective suitor at once melancholic and nostalgic for better times.

The tectonic plates of the Middle East

What was first dubbed "the Arab Spring" has clear ambitions of prolonging itself beyond one season or one year. The revolution in a hitherto unknown and uninteresting Tunisia had began a shift of the tectonic plates in the Middle East and like every major shift, it is unlikely to come back to the original configuration. Pundits and analysts of the region - some who have been travelling around, living in and following the region for decades, others newfound enthusiasts - are anything but short of breathtaking predictions of what will and will not happen in the Middle East.

Assad will fall in two months. Brotherhood will not come to power in Egypt. Qaddafi will be able to hang on to his forty plus year old reign. Tunisia will not be ruled by Muslim Brotherhood. Lebanon will become an annex of the Syrian conflict. Jordan and Morocco will follow the revolutionary path. Bouteflika will not be able to hang onto the reins of Algeria. All wrong. The only prediction that has sadly stood the test of time is the view that no peace between Israelis and Palestinians will be made.

What all these analysts, old and new, have forgotten, is that the Middle East is a place that has proven to be explosive exactly when no one is paying attention or peaceful exactly when everyone expects it to implode. Lebanon has for two years withstood the temptation of joining the same confessional war that has torn Syria into a million of factions of official and unofficial rebels, fighters, militants and soldiers. The Jordanian and Moroccan kings have both managed to reshuffle the deck of cards dealt to them to appease their subjects. Algeria sails on slowly but surely, despite displaying all the preconditions of the revolutionary fervour that has infected its two neighbours.

The Libyan conflict, once subject to everyone's attention, seems to have disappeared into the oblivion, as if the vast territory of this tiny country has shrunk on the geopolitical zero-sum game. Yemen, a soup long time brewing, has finally spilled out of the pot and made the pretty blind "world leaders" notice that it joined Afghanistan as the next party place for Al Qaida, and one from which it will be difficult to smoke out. Tunisia, a tiny country with no strategic importance and no difficult neighbourly relations has acted as a precursor, highlighting why the "transition" of its more populous, confessionally richer neighbouring countries (i.e. Egypt) will be infinitely more more complicated.

Indeed, the Egyptian revolution has come a full circle: from worldwide support of Mubarak (despite multiple rigged elections and obvious instances of crony capitalism), to his overthrow and imprisonment (conveniently on the basis of the same charges), the election of Morsi on a forty percent ticket (applauded as a demonstration of islamic democracy only to be heavily criticised on the same charges, i.e. incapacity to combine Islam and democracy), overthrow of Morsi by the army, which is now in the hot seat for having oversteps over its "democratic powers". By now, it is clear this is a game of musical chairs and the buck will not stop here.

All in all, the Tunisian and Egyptian experiments have shown us that democracy and Middle East is not as easy to conjugate in a single sentence as the "western powers" would like us to believe. The experiment of Palestinian democracy, encouraged by the same powers a few years earlier should have demonstrated the dangers of blindly promoting democracy, while at the same time believing that only non religious parties deserve to win. The trick with democracy, it seems, is that letting people choose may have the consequences we are not prepared to accept, but slaves to our own democratic rhetoric, all we can do is refuse to deal with the democratically elected leaders. Not very courteous indeed.

The more courageous, even if less politically correct solution would be to say that we see a tension between "islamic" on the one hand and "democracy" on the other. That would be untenable on multiple accounts, not least because it would be a serious criticism not only of Turkey, but also of other allies in the Gulf, all of whom except for the bellicose Qatar are on the "right" side of the equation. Indonesia and Malaysia might also not take that well. A perhaps more accurate statement is that Arab countries have not been able to adapt their versions of islam to democracy, whether it be Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, Shia in Lebanon or Sunnis of Egypt.

As we see versions 2.0 and 3.0 of the Arab Spring sail by, the map of the entire Middle East is being re-drawn and world leaders can be quite fairly accused of severe near sightedness. While they are busy ascertaining whether or not chemical weapons - once the no-cross line for Barak Obama - was used in Syria, they forget that the lines that have helped to draw between various countries in the Middle East make even less sense now than when they were casually established in the first place. And hence, that what happens in Iraq has an echo in Syria and what happens in Yemen in Saudi Arabia, and what happens in Jordan in Israel.

Western leaders are slaves to the maps as they were established by their predecessors, though the reality of economic and social relations in the region continue to nonchalantly transcend these maps. Christians in Syria have now joined in masse their Lebanese counterparts, the Kurds are dealing in the triangle between Syria, Turkey and the now booming Erbil, the Shia of Lebanon are living on a lifeline from the now poor yet generous Iran. Only the Sunnis seems to be scattered in confusing mosaic of religious factions and political outlooks that has made it difficult for a Sunni corridor to emerge in the region, especially now that the Turkey-Qatar-Saudi alliance looks quite frail.

The tectonic plates of the Middle East are now permanently disjointed and the map of the region a hundred years from now might look as surprising to our followers as the map of the region one hundred years ago looks to us. Regardless, the truth is that no one quite knows how far and how fast these plates will move. We simply don't know what the Arab Spring will be called when the dust settles. What we do know is that we played a near sighted game, choosing to interfere in Libya and not in Syria, going to Iraq and not dealing with Iran, unconditionally supporting Saudi when it "dealt" with the situation in Bahrain. If we lose the Middle East to China and Russia, it would not have been because they offer better alternatives, it is because we - the West - have played a rotten game.

Constructing bubbles

When I was a child, the machine that produced bubbles - those perfectly round, rainbow-coloured, miraculous products of soap and water - fascinated me. With each blow, a bubble came out predictably similar shaped and coloured and yet unique in its route and final destination. Some flew just a few centimetres until colliding with another bubble or object, resulting in an unspectacular explosion. Others flew up and up in the air, hurting my eyes as I desperately tried to stare up at the sunny sky to follow their trajectory and witness how long such a temporary creation as bubble can last. 

When we grow up, we stop blowing bubbles. Years later, as we pass by vendors of gadgets blowing bubbles in the air and children happily running after them, we nostalgically remember those moments when a bubble could bring moments of such intense happiness. Twenty, thirty, forty years later, it takes much more than a soap bubble to bring that warm tangling feeling to our hearts. Or does it? When do we stop blowing and following bubbles, secretly hoping that ours will fly the furthest and somehow, miraculously disappear in the oblivion without exploding?

Probably never. As we grow up and old, the metaphysics of the bubble changes but never the desire  that our bubble be different than all the others, that it flies the farthest, somehow outpacing all the others as they struggle against the wind and all those random curveballs that life throws in our way. With time,  instead of observing the bubble race from the outside, as independent observers thrilled at the moment of happiness afforded by a combination of soap and water, we create bubbles that define the perimeter of our happiness, the circle of our comfort zone. 

And with that almost imperceptible transition, we risk becoming prisoners of our bubble, voluntarily surrendering our freedom to observe the bubble race carelessly from the outside. As we pack more luggage in our own bubble - memories, hurt, love, hatred and desires - our bubbles become heavier and less competitive with others, but being sealed inside, we no longer see that. Instead, we define our bubble by our religious identity, our social class, our professional route and just like this, the possibility of our bubble to intersect with other bubbles grows narrower. 

And as as our bubble become an instrument of exclusion, we lose sight of the vast space where we are flying. What we believe is that instead we stand to gain identity, roots, habits, and a place we call home: a place where we might or might not live, but one to which we are always happy to come back to, almost as happy as we were as children blowing that perfect bubble in the clear sky. But what is home? In English, the word home is any place to which one comes back to at night: it could be a motel, a seven star hotel or a tent - anything but an open space which would automatically connate homelessness. 

This distinction between home and homelessness is not trivial because the latter is not a sign of an unbearable lightless of being - of a bubble gone wildly out of control - but a sign of failure, of an inherent inability to fit into the social fabric, or at the very least of a terrible streak of misfortune, leading to the absence of home, to the absence of a bubble that we can inhabit. Homelessness - whether forced or self-imposed - is the absence of a bubble and while it may liberate us to see things we could not see otherwise, it comes at a price too high for most. 

The late Lebanese American journalist Anthony Shadid wrote that in Arabic the word bayt - literally translated as house - connotes more than a physical home. Bayt is a sense of belonging to a place, a metaphysical connection that is beyond the walls of a place to which we return on a daily basis. Perhaps bayt is a better equivalent of our childhood bubble than home, a weightless sphere where we inhabit our own version of a fairy tale with perhaps no universally happy end, but one that makes us want to smile as we look into the vast sky. 

Bayt is not necessarily inconsistent with homelessness, at least in the English language sense of it. To me, bayt is more about that place where we think we belong, despite everything that we know and believe about ourselves, despite all that might be factual and therefore logical. And it is a journey to this place that makes for a life, for a light bubble that floats and that we control ever so lightly and whose trajectory depends on other bubbles with which it collides or does not collide, as a result of the direction of the wind of fate. 

Conversations with a Limousine Driver

On her last trip to Cairo to complete her book, Chloé is greeted by a man proudly presenting himself as her limousine driver. Abu Sid Hom spends the following week obediently chauffeuring her around the buzzing metropolis until a car accident opens a old wound. In a space of two hours, her image of him is uprooted, as he takes her from Cairo to Beirut in a family drama that in the same broad sweep overturns her perception of herself.For a complete version of the book, please visit:http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B6TEE6A

Islam and socialim: two sides of the same coin?

When Gamal Abdel Nasser won a coup d'etat in Egypt, no doubt in his wildest imagination would he have imagined that the reins of the country would eventually pass to Hosni Mubarak, much less what the country would become under his thirty year rule. Nasser's rule in Egypt swept socialism in Egypt, but also inspired similarly inclined regimes all over the region, not least in the neighbouring Syria where Baathism became an ideologic mirror image of Egypt's political and social regime.

Those were the days of USSR's glory in the Middle East: the era of proclaimed sufficiency, of industrial substitution and the promotion of "egalitarian"experiment à la Sovietique. But they were as numbered as Nasser's life and when he passed away in 1970s, the socialist experiment in Egypt, one of the most populous countries in the Middle East, was buried with him. Sadat, Minister of State under Nasser, to a great surprise of the latter's admirers, did a U-turn from his predecessor's politics, by concluding peace with Israel and downgrading the relationship with the all powerful Soviet Union. 

The price of his decisions and the political whirlwind that resulted in the arrival of Hosni Mubarak on the throne of Egypt is well known. Mubarak's arrival resulted in a fair degree of continuity from Sadat's foreign policy, notably in terms of the peace treaty with Israel and on further rapprochement with the United States at the expense of the USSR. Over the next few decades, the Egyptian economy was operated by the ruling apparatus, as a quasi-oligarchical, quasi-capitalist regime. 

At a closer look, it showed the vestiges of both post-Soviet re-organisation towards market economy - concentration of economic power in the hands of the few - and some crippled version of social democracy through, for example, handouts to the poor through a very inefficient subsidy system. In the five years prior to the demise of Mubarak, Egypt was an active privatiser and an active promoter of foreign investment which was seen by the government as a key mechanism from brining greater know how in the country, while helping to create employment. We all know how that story ended. The word privatisation in Egypt now is all but blasphemy, and not without reason.

At the same time, the rule of Sadat and Mubarak also coincided with a feature common to communist regimes, that is, repression of religious rights. The Soviet Union has been a stellar model of this, wiping out centuries of religious practice among its subjects in one broad sweep and all but erasing any evidence of worship in the country. While the current Putin government is clearly in bed with the orthodox church, this cheap gimmick is hardly confusing seasoned political observers of Russia. Putin needs the church as much as the nobles needed it in the middle ages to keep the population believing and obedient. 

Not only in the USSR has communism proven difficult to conjugate with religion. In the Middle East, both Nasser and Assad - inspired by the promise of equal right and power to the "peasants" - also snubbed religion. Interestingly, while Mubarak basically rejected most of Nasser's political orientations, he obediently followed his steps when it came to the rejection of religion in political circles and arguably much further. Islamist parties, notably the Muslim Brootherhood, who advocated greater social equality and greater role for religion were driven under and out for decades, despite their allegedly similar social objectives. 

But history has a tendency to play dirty tricks. Neither Nasser, nor Sadat, not Mubarak could imagine that they would be followed by Morsi. A common thread in the very distant politics of Nasser and Morsi is that as socialists and and islamists, they promote egalitarian ideals and promise power and economic re-distribution towards the less advantaged. And while it would be easy to argue that all politicians tend to campaign on these type of slogans due to their easy marketability with the masses, the reality is more nuanced than that. Mubarak,  for example, had never seriously stressed social equality, even if could not renege on bread and cooking oil subsidies, lest the country explode in a wide-scale revolt as it did during the 2008 food crisis. 

Beyond the Middle East, in continental Europe, the most socialist-oriented government, leaving aside the Scandinavian social-democratic republics, is arguably in France. France has ironically also been aiming to promote and preserve at all costs its "liacité" model, which presumes no religious representation in politics and discourages religious displays in public life more generally. The new French president, Francois Hollande, currently riding the wave of popular disillusionment with his incompetence, won the recent elections by a tiny margin entirely based on his promise of greater equality and "power to the people". He is actively delivering on the promise to wipe out "the rich" in France, who are indeed following his instructions and are leaving the country like rats from a sinking ship. 

There is a certain similarity between François Hollande and Mohammed Morsi. Both have campaigned on unrealistic promises and by encouraging outrange at "excess" by popular masses further by pointing a finger at the abuses of their predecessor. Both have promised equality. Both have promised a quick change. And change they have delivered, but what kind of change? While there are some clear differences of conviction and style between Morsi and Hollande, the change they have delivered so far can be best characterised as stagnation. 

They have not been able to deliver on their "social" promises because they revert to the historically-proven bankrupt ideology that beyond the inspired pages of Karl Marx has not materialised in a successful economic order anywhere in the world. Their world order pretends that the economy is a third wheel in a bicycle that they can pedal on two wheels. Morsi has imagined that Egypt can make do without foreign investors and that unemployment can be plugged by governmental jobs. Hollande, also a fan of creating jobs by presidential decrees instead of encouraging foreign companies to come to France or at least French companies not to leave, thinks he lives in an autarchy. 

Both are delusional. With or without religion, they seem to have arrived at similar outcomes. The next few months, in both countries will be interesting to watch, for entirely different reasons. But one theme that will have to be common to both, lest the countries follow the path of Greece and declare bankruptcy, is the return to the politics of their predecessors: a welcome wave to the businesses and yes, the "rich" that run them. In the irony of this world then, is that social democracy and islamic democracy might just have the same economic outcomes.

On monarchies and companies: what Middle East has to do with corporate governance

In political science, the debate about relative benefits of monarchy as opposed to other forms of political organisation such as a single or multiple party system has been raging for a while. And let us not be mistaken, this debate has not much focused on Sweden, Monaco or the United Kingdom as opposed to France, the United States or     Germany. In Europe, the dying breed of kingdoms, aka the "symbolic kingdom",  remains of interest only because from time to time photos of naked royalty appear in local tabloids, reminding everyone that even royalty can do remarkably stupid things, making us feel better about ourselves.

The symbolic kingdoms do not unfortunately light up the imagination of political scientists or frankly, for that matter, anyone else except perhaps for some small minority of the French that still hope for a demise of the Republic and the rightful - in their view - restoration of the French dynasty. For that, they have even located the heir to the French throne who is apparently anxious to resume his duties interrupted over two hundred years ago. Aside from the imaginative French, the European kingdoms don't do much as a litmus test for what a monarchical system in Europe would be like as opposed to the multiparty system (which the Americans have quickly rebranded into a much simpler, American kind of good vs bad Bushism, the mighty democracy).

Without going into the whole debate whether we actually have a democratic system in Europe or North America, which is worth to have but can hardly be squeezed into a few hundred words, what is clear is that the only interesting place where monarchies have not only survived but where they have been stable is the Middle East. About half of the countries in the region are reigned by kings, and the royal hold on the region stretches from the far away oil-awash Gulf sheikdoms to North Africa (Morocco) and the Levant (Jordan). Commonalities between them are actually few and far between.

With the unrest that has swept the region in the past year, the question of why Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and not Saudi Arabia, Oman or Kuwait has resurfaced again, and not without justification. Why Tunisia which had a relatively higher standard of living and in some sense greater political liberties than Morocco? Why Egypt, which shares many fundamental economic and social challenges than the neighboring Jordan, which albeit    more than ten times smaller demographically, is definitely not ten times more wealthy or much more egalitarian in its distribution of wealth?

These are the question that have resurfaced in the turbulent seas, brought onshore by the Arab Spring and left us to ponder once again this old beast in new clothes. Only last week, Marc Lynch was asking in the latest edition of Foreign Policy: Does Monarchy Matter?, arguing against what he terms the "monarchical exception". For many like Lynch, monarchy does not matter, what matters are the crutches that have for the past few decades been propping it up: oil. According to this view, monarchies and monarchs are not that different from anyone else, even if they find themselves special.

Some point that even oil could not help Bahrain spiral down the same route as Egypt and Tunisia earlier this year and friends in Manama say that the whiff of tear gas has stubbornly installed itself in the streets of the capital, even as the government has purged Shias from virtually all posts of consequence. Even in the stable Saudi Arabia, which has poured an estimated 130 billion dollars into creating public sector posts and increasing subsidies on already subsidised staples and petrochemical products (which are already sold at a fraction of their actual cost), demonstrations in the restful (and Shia) Dammam are now reported.

Could this fly in the face of monarchical resilience theory? Is the invitation by the Gulf Cooperation Council for Morocco and Jordan to join the club of remaining Middle Eastern monarchs, all by the way proclaiming themselves to be somehow descendants of the Prophet, a last ditch attempt to hold on to power in the same way that Assad is clinging on to his in Syria-now-turned-into-battlefield? In other words, is there reason to believe that the monarchs are going down the same drain where the other now-dictators (yesterday-key-allies) have just recently spiraled?

Not so quick. While the wind of the Arab Spring has certainly blown over the Gulf and other Middle East monarchies, it looks to have just roughed up some sand in the desert without much affecting the Bedouins. They have adjusted their outfits, made some noises about political reform (aka Kuwait and Morocco), and got back on their horses, head up and nose up in the air. No gruesome photos of captured dictators, reports of constant clashes with the police, videos of wailing women complaining of their husbands being detained for no apparent reason. The movie set is back to normal, no change of actors is required.

Regardless of whether this will or will not continue, the lessons of monarchical versus single party (aka individual) control, leaves much to ponder over, not only for the future of the Middle East but for the future of the civilization more generally. For the reasons that monarchs in the Middle East, and indeed elsewhere, tend to survive longer   is that their incentive to squeeze the country for all it has is balanced with their long term political survival, which hinges on some reinvestment and some returns to the population to keep grievances at bay. The monarchs, after all, want some oil to left for their followers, while the autocrats fail to have this longer term vision and tend to upset the balance quicker by getting their hands on more and faster. The case of Ben Ali is perhaps the most poignant.

You might think that the Middle East is far away, that oil is not scheduled to deplete for another few decades, and decide that monarchy and bedouins are not that interesting after all. But before you do that, consider that monarchies and companies, although they appear to have nothing in common, do have something very much to share. The long term perspective. This year, we have not just seen major events in the Arab world, we have also seen persistent and violent demonstrations on the Wall Street and its equivalent in every major North American or European city, bemoaning financial capitalism and its obsession with hard and fast returns.

Much like single party leaders the type of Ben Ali or Assad, the CEOs of major financial companies have proven to be obsessed with milking the cow as fast as they possibly could. Neither suspected that they could be thrown out, investigated or prosecuted for doing so. Now the tide has turned and every misstep by a bank CEO or even the lowliest of its employees is scrutinised in large print in the Financial Times to the point that the bankers themselves are voluntarily giving up their bonuses and talking to the regulators about better oversight of executive compensation.

Perhaps the capitalists remaining in the game should also revisit the monarchical exception theory to better understand why some manage to remain in power over generations, while others barely manage to make it through one generation. It is often said that the "old" capitalists, the likes of Henry Fords and the Rothchilds,  had a longer term vision that included their employees and suppliers in the picture, as opposed to trying to squeeze them for their last penny.

While today, the buzzwords such as ESG, social investment and inclusive growth are all there, the reality does not follow suit. Looking at evening news while indulging on toasts and caviar,  today's managers should remember that not sharing their caviar might at best leave them fighting for their life (aka Assad), and at worst might just dry up that caviar source altogether (aka Ben Ali). So, monarchy matters but not only for the monarchs after all.

Centers of gravity 

New York, London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo. The list of world class cities is not that much longer than that. On that list are those cities, where everyone knows someone, everyone has a thought on some great place to go to, a place with a dear memory, a scene from a film that stroke a particular note, a small nostalgia in their heart. These are cities with which we have a permanent-and-hate relationship in that they swallow us while we are on premises, exhaust us till our last breath with their vastness, but constantly enthrall us with their ability to innovate, yet remain loyal to their established style.

These are the cities always worth a visit: rain or shine, cheap or expensive, downtown or in the periphery, under ring or left wing governments. And they continue to faithfully attract crowds of tourists of all kinds, from the hippie backpackers fitting the exact number of pairs of underwear for the days in town, to the mass tourists sightseeing from the comfort of their mega-sized buses equipped with multilingual travel guides, to the rich and famous with access to the trendiest spots. 

Over the years, other cities have entered into the race for the new travel destination hotspot, and may have, for a second, eclipsed our old time favorites. With eyes full of awe, we have flocked to Bali, Beijing, Dubai, Buenos Aires, Moscow for some Russian chic, some Latin American passion, some Middle Eastern luxury. And sometimes, some of us, have come back, but most have finished that book and moved on to the next genre in the anticipation of a surprise, a novelty, of that tingling sensation of awe, even if it last just a few seconds.

In search for that fleeting tingle, travel guides have tripped over each other to dig up the new jewel, lost somewhere in the middle of some unknown ocean, but eventually we've run of oceans to explore. And we've more or less ran out of up-and-coming cities likes of Istanbul or Dubai and we've gotten bored again. The travel industry went back to the drawing board and have over the years, come up, to their great credit, with scores of cities and villages with resorts, boutique hotels, temporarily unspoiled nature and rare species of animals. 

The competition in the industry has heated up to boiling temperatures. Dubai has poured cash - air-conditioning open space - to build what is now the highest building in the world, the Bourj Al Khalifa. Butan has thought of restricting the number of annual visas for tourists in order to make them feel exclusive. Others are pondering as to how they can up their game in emerging forums such as the Intelligent Cities Summit (whoever thought of that name!), where urban architects, designers, construction geniuses and others get to ponder how to make their city the best place to live. 

The truth, however, is that our choice of a city to grow old in has virtually nothing to do with our choice of a city to visit. Indeed, one could argue that they are the opposite and the fact that retirees often move from large urban centers to a countryside setting is an iron proof of that. For most of us avid travelers, the tingle does not arise from seeing roses in a remote garden, unless our grandmother was an avid gardener, but at a sight something novel. Perhaps Intelligent Cities is not what we are after in the end. 

What we are all after is novelty and novelty at all cost: at the cost of risk, at the cost of extreme temperatures, at the cost of understanding nothing in foreign languages, and of course at the cost of some serious money. While Kabul and Baghdad might indeed be a tad too far for most of us, tourists are now flocking to places as improbable as North Korea or Burma. Some even drop in places as unconventional as Reykjavik, which after the Icelandic meltdown, has become unsurprisingly cheap and surprisingly trendy.

Since the transport industry has banalized the crossing of continents, we have discovered and categorized cities into top destinations for honeymoons, water sports, spas, sex tourism, beautiful people, natural waterfalls, parties. And yet, les grandes classiques have survived the discoveries of destinations with rare animals, cheap sex, ethnic food and around-the-clock sun. They have shaken off the cheap copycat attempts such as Las Vegas or Tianduchang (a Chinese city built as a copy of Paris).

Their reputation stands, completely unfettered, in sight of these discoveries and up-and-coming competitors. They are the cities of their own class, of the same class, as the British nobility or the Hollywood superstars who no longer have to prove their credibility to anyone else. And while they are no longer the economic powerhouses of our century, that no longer matters because they have already passed that stage, created their persona, and moved on, leaving the Moscows of this world to repaint their facade, the Beijings of this world to create their persona and the Beiruts of this world to rebuild.

So, why do we always flock for more of the same while looking for novelty? The answer to this question lies perhaps as much in the uniqueness of each of these cities, as in their ability to cater to all tastes, from the most unsophisticated, to the most demanding. To their ability to pander to inequality, to appall, as much as enthrall, to surprise as much as exhaust, to be anything but remain predictable. To their obvious inequality. Only in London can one eat a mountain of quality Indian food for under 5 pounds and spot a 150,000 pound pot of face cream at Harrods. Only in New York can you access any cuisine in the world and speak every language in the world. 

These cities, to the horror of their bourgeoisie, have swallowed waves of immigration that have rendered them more colorful, more socially complex, more dangerous, but also more multifaceted than those cities who have sent their native Chinese, Mexican, or Moroccans there. These new arrivals have had to fit in the style of the house, be it Dior, Abercrombie and Fitch, or Versace, and weave in the fabric of their host their own influence, without disrupting the grand design of the tissue. 

The result have been cities that - much like the fashion houses - have been able to retain their persona, even faced with bouts of bad behavior as was the case of Dior when John Galliano went of the cuff. So, next time someone tells you that Bodrum is the next Saint Tropez or that Saint Tropez is better value for money than Paris, think again. And again. And again. For some things old are still better than a million things new. And that's precisely why we gravitate there, as Newton told us already a while back.