from the land of gods to the land of God...
The place currently known as the Arab Republic of Egypt has an undeniable place in the archives of history, not least for the marvelous temples created by ancient egyptians, their secrets of beauty and their burial traditions. In the 19th century, Egypt stood at the crossroads of trade from Europe to the Middle East. Some would argue that it has not lost its historically important role - I would beg to disagree. Today, Egypt remains one of the most populous countries in the Middle East, on par perhaps only with Iran, but its influence as the center of power of the Arab world, not to mention beyond, has definitely declined. True enough, the rhythm of life in Cairo makes New York seem like a sleepy village, but for all the hustle-bustle and the constant chaos, which makes the entire city resemble a sort of a giant souk, the echo does not carry far.
Politically, Egypt is embroiled in the succession tango with all of the local media running over each other trying to comment on the mode of succession from Hosni Moubarak, to Moubarak Jr. - aka Gamal. On my last trip to Cairo a year ago, protesting judges got wrapped up and somehow silenced. A year later, I think there is no longer a discussion of whether, just of how Moubarak Jr. will fill in his fathers' shoes. Luckily, the creativeness of current world leaders on this point is not leaving much to imagination, and Hosni just needs to have a little chat with Vladimir if ever he runs out of innovative ideas. That being said, it does not look like it. As it looks, Egyptian political leadership has much domestic issues to deal with, not least of them, problems related to the homegrown Muslim brotherhood movement, which despite clear signs from the government, does not seem to want to hide its head in the sand. Browsing the blogs of Egyptian students and human rights activists, it is pretty clear that the regime does not treat their islamic brothers so kindly with the enormous Egyptian police (as opposed to the 'tourist police', more on which later...) dedicated to controlling the islamist opposition, political and otherwise. It is a sort of Musharaf dilemma: how to control the islamist factions without appearing anti-Islamic, since the latter would not go down so well neither with the large majority of the local population nor with the neighbouring countries whose kings legitimate their position with reference to Islam.
All in all, given the widespread domestic discontent, manifested in the recent strongest wave of worker protests since World War II, the regime has its hands full at home and is not aiming to conduct grand maneuvers abroad. About the latest such move, albeit short-lived, was the Nasserist political merger of Egypt and Syria. While the historical role of Egypt in regional politics is still evident as one walks past the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, where one of the region's 'most wanted' man (for whom conference organisers now send helicopters as a sign of respect for his time), Amr Moussa, sits in what is perhaps one of the best maintained and defended castles in the the posh Zamalek neighbourhood of Cairo, the role of Egypt in regional politics in now marginal and seems to have been taken over by the heavyweight Saudi Arabia. The lack of Egypt's political weight may be partially explained by the general lack of respect of its leader, who the locals have nicknamed in arabic 'the Pharaoh', referring to the fact that little Hosni has been in power for the longest in the region, second behind his Libyan neighbour Colonel Qadafi.
More importantly though, the economically impoverished Egypt, with allegedly over 1 million homeless in Cairo alone, cannot punch on the level of the oil rich Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia in particular, which has taken over in all but one dimension - as the authoritative center of fatwas (islamic jurisprudence) in the Arab world. There, the Al Ahzar university and mosque in Cairo is still recognised as a central source, mostly for reasons related to the unpalatability of the Wahhabist islam outside Saudi Arabia. It is true that since the appointment of a reformist cabinet in Egypt in 2004, the place has seen privatisation, liberalisation and financial de-regulation at a record speed, as a result receiving greater foreign investment and improving the conditions for the indigenous private sector. But just a few days in Egypt show the woeful inadequacy of what has been achieved as opposed to what is required to lift this huge country out of absolute poverty and, perhaps even more dangerously, its huge illiteracy. (The current illiteracy rate in Egypt is estimated at over 50%, and is much higher among women, since popping out children does not require any reading or writing skills.)
And even with 6-7% economic growth in Egypt over the last few years, Egypt is still one of the poorest countries in the region, and this is particularly evident outside of Cairo. A short one hour flight to Luxor reveals a complete lack of infrastructure, where the 30 year old Cairo taxis are replaced by tired donkeys, alternating between the ultra-modern tourist buses, carrying the european tourists to rummage through the ruins of the Luxor and Karnak temples and walk down the Valleys of Queens and Kings. Even in Cairo, the humblest western standard corresponds to a single 'up and coming' neighbourhood of Cairo, Zamalek, whose 5 star hotels and embassies are protected by an army of egyptian police, and where I could - almost —imagine myself living, if I ever managed to figure out how to breathe through the cloud of black smoke enveloping the city. I could not help but thinking that given the great inventions of their predecessors and the robustness of the commerce in ancient Egypt, the state of local industry is rather weak and explains why even the tourists who have and want to spend money often cannot find anything worthwhile to spend it on. Egyptian industry is pretty much limited to cotton, light manufacturing and is hugely boosted by tourism, which is doing rather well across the country, despite the periodic bombings and clashes between the police and the disenfranchised Bedouin tribes in Sharm El-Sheikh.
In Egypt, tourism is an ever-expanding sector with formal structures and with let's just call them 'less formal structures' including tourist harassment, practiced by taxi drivers, hotel staff, whoever can ask for money for some sort of a 'service'. This latter category of course includes that very infamous tourist police. In theory, the mission of the tourist police, is to protect tourists, which in reality do not need much protection since the locals are a pretty friendly folk. In reality, I suspect that tourist police just helps the government create employment for uneducated males and since the salaries are ridiculous, like elsewhere in the public service in egypt, their are not shy to ask for 'assistance' from these very tourists they are meant to protect. Left to his own devices for one day, my poor boyfriend got almost arrested a 'tourist police' for...taking photos at the pyramids! He was explained that unless he receives a certain amount about which he was never to speak to anybody, he would take his camera away. Throughout my whole time in Egypt, I had the impression that everything has a price, and at one point I was almost tempted to ask how much for a mummy at the cairo museum. I didn't unfortunately, leaving it to be 'cleaned' by a bored looking lady who was diligently wiping the floors and the statues with the same cloth and chemical solution. This, coupled with the general state of the museum in Cairo made be realise why the British refuse the repeated requests of the Egyptian government to return the treasures from the British museum to their native homeland.
Which brings me to my next and perhaps last point - the culture of the ancient egyptians. And to be sure, there is more of it than one can absorb in a single visit to Egypt. Some of these obedient tourists whom I have seen getting of the ultra-modern tourist buses, often spend a week or two in egypt, in an attempt to get to know more about this cradle of civilisation. The issue is that this rich cultural heritage is not easily accessible. I spent a few hours at the Cairo museum, recommended as the place for the culturally interested, and I have to say that alas, I did not walk out of it any more informed about the Egyptian culture or history than I walked in. Reading a lonely planet guide would have been more useful. This is surely not because there is nothing to see at the Cairo museum, but simply because pieces are arranged like furniture in a warehouse, there are virtually no explanations, except for the rooms that are financed by the development agencies. One finds a similar state of affaires at the pyramids and the ancient temples, where one guide noted that a part of the temple was mounted upside down (!) since it was down probably by construction workers instead of archeologists. If you are interested in seeing the history of ancient egyptians, my advice would be to go sooner rather than later since between the russian tourists who insist on jumping on all top of all the sculptures to take napoleon-style photos and writing something deep like 'Nina loves Boris' ON the statues, and the locals who are willing to sell off any part of their national heritage for a negligible amount of money, I was genuinely surprised there was anything left altogether. The pharaohs, after all, have no religious significance to the new generations of egyptians, who are faced with a religious revival over the the last decade, which places any mosque much higher than any ancient temples which bring hordes of tourists to their country.
Of course, the mosques in Egypt, not least the the Soliman Pasha mosque, hidden behind the Citadel in Cairo, which serves as the burial site for the family of the Pasha, are breathtaking and for a little backshish (equivalent to a bribe or payment in arabic), one can even climb its minaret. But that does not make the lamentable state of historic monuments in Egypt any easier to cope with.
At the end of the trip, I couldn't help thinking that outside the fake oasis of 5 star hotels (which don't get me wrong, I very much appreciated) the real Egypt has declined, as some of the old Cairo bourgeoisie have confirmed to me. A drive through the islamic neighbourhood of Cairo and a walk outside the tourist area of Luxor demonstrate the rate of poverty that is closer to Africa than the Middle East. Politically, economically and culturally, Cairo is no longer the center of gravity in the Middle East. It may be the center of religion, but that may actually be the explanation for the lack in all the other dimensions. In going from the land of the pharaonic gods to the the land of one god, the ordinary Egyptians have won not much that a non-believer can judge as progress, at least not so far.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Ratatouille not on strike...
The character from the American blockbuster Ratatouille has suddenly entered my life, not in the cinema but on one very real evening this week. There I was, going for my second glass of beaujolais nouveau, a type of french wine that is snubbed by wine connaisseurs but generally adored by the wider pubic to the point that its release on the third Thursday of November, becomes the reason for a nationwide party. Falling prey to the inability to really distinguish between the good wines and their less sophisticated brothers, I happen to love Beaujolais, for its uncomplicated taste and lack of the acidic aftertaste of the bordeau and other known french wines. So it's at this critical point where my head was getting comfortably fuzzy grace à the second glass of this substance, which almost made me forget the prospect of having walk across Paris to get to the office the following day, that I saw Ratatouille.
But before I tell you more about my personal encounter with Ratatouille, I can't resist the opportunity to weigh in with a few cents on the french transport strike - I think it might also help put this episode in the context. And in case you are not the unlucky parisien or parisienne having to put on your walking shoes or try to sneak out of your bed to chain one of the public bikes so no bastard neighbour contemplates to snab away your only means of getting to the office - we the unlucky parisians, have been faced with a general strike of all the transport workers. The interesting feature of this strike, I must note, is not that there are no minimum service requirements on the subway, nor the sight of people virtually falling onto the rail tracks while a much awaited 45 min late train finally emerges out of the abyss, but its very unpredictability.
We simply do not know whether there is a general paralysis or just a cardiac arrest. As one subway worker explained to me when I dared to inquire in the morning about my prospects of getting home at night, "mais, ce sont des grevists, madame, bien sûr on ne sait pas s'ils viennent ou pas!" which translates into something close to "of course those who want to strike don't tell us about it in advance!". Ah oui? I guess I should have figured out the perverted logic there. It's not enough to strike, for maximum effect, lets keep it a secret from all those stupid people who will insist on perpetuating the mean capitalistic structure of our society. Voila! The next blow to capitalism in France is that the general strike of french transport workers has now turned into something of a national complaint campaign, with every organised labour group protesting against some perceived injustice and even the non-labour movements such as students finding related reasons to smash windows and walk around the streets of Paris, screaming populist slogans.
It is in this general context and I as was comfortably starting to forget the episode of having to high jack a cab to get back from the office and the less-than-comforting prospective of having to do the same on the following day, that my friend says 'est-ce une souris?'. for a moment there, I misunderstood the question, but when I turned around I saw a little grey mouse not any less daring than in Ratatouille.
As I am writing this, I am not sure what is more embarrassing, the fact that I still go to see children's cartoons or the fact that I go to bars which puts to shame Darrell's 'My family and other animals'. So, in all my naivete, I get up and summon our waiter to explain himself. Result: no one moves and I am starting to raise my tone. Finally, the neighbouring table, who, I might add, is having dinner and not just drinking wine like us, explains: 'ils savent, mais ils s'en foutent', which translates to something like 'they know, but they dont really give a !)%£!!'. Ok, clearly. Finally, the waiter slowly moves towards our table, realising that this wierd one (me), is not about to shut it, and explains in what must be one of the most 'convincing' explanations in the world: He comes here from time when it's cold outside, he is not dangerous, it's ok. oh really? HE does?!!!! So this is it, apparently, the general closure of the subway is having an impact on the local mice population, who are cold, figure it, and are coming over to have some Beaujolais as well. I think this will become my benchmark for all the illogical explanations to come...
The character from the American blockbuster Ratatouille has suddenly entered my life, not in the cinema but on one very real evening this week. There I was, going for my second glass of beaujolais nouveau, a type of french wine that is snubbed by wine connaisseurs but generally adored by the wider pubic to the point that its release on the third Thursday of November, becomes the reason for a nationwide party. Falling prey to the inability to really distinguish between the good wines and their less sophisticated brothers, I happen to love Beaujolais, for its uncomplicated taste and lack of the acidic aftertaste of the bordeau and other known french wines. So it's at this critical point where my head was getting comfortably fuzzy grace à the second glass of this substance, which almost made me forget the prospect of having walk across Paris to get to the office the following day, that I saw Ratatouille.
But before I tell you more about my personal encounter with Ratatouille, I can't resist the opportunity to weigh in with a few cents on the french transport strike - I think it might also help put this episode in the context. And in case you are not the unlucky parisien or parisienne having to put on your walking shoes or try to sneak out of your bed to chain one of the public bikes so no bastard neighbour contemplates to snab away your only means of getting to the office - we the unlucky parisians, have been faced with a general strike of all the transport workers. The interesting feature of this strike, I must note, is not that there are no minimum service requirements on the subway, nor the sight of people virtually falling onto the rail tracks while a much awaited 45 min late train finally emerges out of the abyss, but its very unpredictability.
We simply do not know whether there is a general paralysis or just a cardiac arrest. As one subway worker explained to me when I dared to inquire in the morning about my prospects of getting home at night, "mais, ce sont des grevists, madame, bien sûr on ne sait pas s'ils viennent ou pas!" which translates into something close to "of course those who want to strike don't tell us about it in advance!". Ah oui? I guess I should have figured out the perverted logic there. It's not enough to strike, for maximum effect, lets keep it a secret from all those stupid people who will insist on perpetuating the mean capitalistic structure of our society. Voila! The next blow to capitalism in France is that the general strike of french transport workers has now turned into something of a national complaint campaign, with every organised labour group protesting against some perceived injustice and even the non-labour movements such as students finding related reasons to smash windows and walk around the streets of Paris, screaming populist slogans.
It is in this general context and I as was comfortably starting to forget the episode of having to high jack a cab to get back from the office and the less-than-comforting prospective of having to do the same on the following day, that my friend says 'est-ce une souris?'. for a moment there, I misunderstood the question, but when I turned around I saw a little grey mouse not any less daring than in Ratatouille.
As I am writing this, I am not sure what is more embarrassing, the fact that I still go to see children's cartoons or the fact that I go to bars which puts to shame Darrell's 'My family and other animals'. So, in all my naivete, I get up and summon our waiter to explain himself. Result: no one moves and I am starting to raise my tone. Finally, the neighbouring table, who, I might add, is having dinner and not just drinking wine like us, explains: 'ils savent, mais ils s'en foutent', which translates to something like 'they know, but they dont really give a !)%£!!'. Ok, clearly. Finally, the waiter slowly moves towards our table, realising that this wierd one (me), is not about to shut it, and explains in what must be one of the most 'convincing' explanations in the world: He comes here from time when it's cold outside, he is not dangerous, it's ok. oh really? HE does?!!!! So this is it, apparently, the general closure of the subway is having an impact on the local mice population, who are cold, figure it, and are coming over to have some Beaujolais as well. I think this will become my benchmark for all the illogical explanations to come...
Sunday, November 04, 2007
from the land of petrodollars
'There are no poor people in Bahrain', tells me my Bahraini colleague, as we drive through Manama in her huge 4x4 SUV that reminds me of the hummers and the like which help the fellow canadians back out of their unshovelled driveways. In Bahrain, almost everyone drives a huge truck, but certainly not for a fear of being snow stuck, but for the simple fact that petrol is .25 cents a liter, so why not? The fuzzy and cute ecological considerations are non-considerations in the Gulf where oil is cheap and not about to run out, at least in the near future, and where 'there are no poor people'. As such, the air conditioning becomes a threat to health as it forces the temperatures to drop below any level of comfort and where SUVs are more the rule than the exception. Al Gore would be turning in his grave, if not for the fact that he is not yet dead.
Almost every developing country, and most certainly those that find themselves in the Middle East, can be described in terms of disparities of wealth. In the Gulf, it is not really the disparity of wealth but the abundance of it that is so striking. The diamond jewellery that makes an eye disturbing contrast with the black obayas, the SUV convoys of the 'royal family' right of Kingdom (a recent movie on bombing of a foreigners compound in Riyad), the hotels and restaurants of the Gulf are a whole different story compared to their poor Middle Eastern neighbours, and frankly speaking, compared to 'industrialised' European countries as well.
All in all, it is not the difference between the 'have' and 'have nots' that's striking, but the extent of the 'haves'. The trendy Parisians from the 6th or the 16th arrondissement or the upper east side New Yorkers pale in comparison with the wealth of the Gulf, in part because they just do not have enough of it, in part because they do not possess the skill of showing it. Perhaps only the nouveaux riches Russians can compare with their taste for bling bling and luxury. Having money in the Gulf is not something that one hides, and while in the Western world, one can only make inferrences about one's financial situation by the presence of the latest Vitton or Prada bag (and even there is always a suspicion it was made in Turkey), in the countries of the oil rich Arabian peninsula, no guessing is required.
In a business conference, the royal family and its advisers are allocated very VIP looking rows, which I, as a speaker in this event, for one instant pondered whether I should dare occupy, only to quickly realise I am not quite there yet. No conference proceedings start until every scheduled royal family member arrives and until all their perfume and coffee boys are ready to make their non stop rounds to make this event bearable for the royal family. No one dares to say a word until the local sheikh addresses the common folk with a pre-written speech on something having to do with improving the standards of living for the people of his nation.
The celebrity-like treatments of the 'haves', i.e. the royal families of the Gulf, is a fundamental feature of this region. From their personal coffee and perfume boy, to the VIP table, to the VIP car, to the special falkan shipped for His of Her Excellency from some impoverished African country, no mistakes can be made. According to the latest Forbes ranking of the world's richest individuals, there are 'only' 31 Arab billionaires who carry a combined wealth of $126.6 billion, or $4.1 billion per individual. That seems rather modest compared to the number of millionnaires and billionaires globally, but considering that the Middle East represents only something like 5% of world's population and that the wealth is so tightly controlled, make no mistake about the implications of these figures.
Children are often asked what they would like to become when they grow up, and I think I have now finally found my answer; a sheikh in a Gulf country! Please note that sheikh is a gender sensitive term, and I am not sure whether I would want to be a Sheikha. Let's face it, women in the Gulf, even if they can drive and interact with their professors not only through a screen as is the case in Saudi, and even those lucky few born in royal families, are not in the same league. But this has not stopped the trend adopted by a few tricky parents in this part of the world to name their daughters 'Sheikha'.
'There are no poor people in Bahrain', tells me my Bahraini colleague, as we drive through Manama in her huge 4x4 SUV that reminds me of the hummers and the like which help the fellow canadians back out of their unshovelled driveways. In Bahrain, almost everyone drives a huge truck, but certainly not for a fear of being snow stuck, but for the simple fact that petrol is .25 cents a liter, so why not? The fuzzy and cute ecological considerations are non-considerations in the Gulf where oil is cheap and not about to run out, at least in the near future, and where 'there are no poor people'. As such, the air conditioning becomes a threat to health as it forces the temperatures to drop below any level of comfort and where SUVs are more the rule than the exception. Al Gore would be turning in his grave, if not for the fact that he is not yet dead.
Almost every developing country, and most certainly those that find themselves in the Middle East, can be described in terms of disparities of wealth. In the Gulf, it is not really the disparity of wealth but the abundance of it that is so striking. The diamond jewellery that makes an eye disturbing contrast with the black obayas, the SUV convoys of the 'royal family' right of Kingdom (a recent movie on bombing of a foreigners compound in Riyad), the hotels and restaurants of the Gulf are a whole different story compared to their poor Middle Eastern neighbours, and frankly speaking, compared to 'industrialised' European countries as well.
All in all, it is not the difference between the 'have' and 'have nots' that's striking, but the extent of the 'haves'. The trendy Parisians from the 6th or the 16th arrondissement or the upper east side New Yorkers pale in comparison with the wealth of the Gulf, in part because they just do not have enough of it, in part because they do not possess the skill of showing it. Perhaps only the nouveaux riches Russians can compare with their taste for bling bling and luxury. Having money in the Gulf is not something that one hides, and while in the Western world, one can only make inferrences about one's financial situation by the presence of the latest Vitton or Prada bag (and even there is always a suspicion it was made in Turkey), in the countries of the oil rich Arabian peninsula, no guessing is required.
In a business conference, the royal family and its advisers are allocated very VIP looking rows, which I, as a speaker in this event, for one instant pondered whether I should dare occupy, only to quickly realise I am not quite there yet. No conference proceedings start until every scheduled royal family member arrives and until all their perfume and coffee boys are ready to make their non stop rounds to make this event bearable for the royal family. No one dares to say a word until the local sheikh addresses the common folk with a pre-written speech on something having to do with improving the standards of living for the people of his nation.
The celebrity-like treatments of the 'haves', i.e. the royal families of the Gulf, is a fundamental feature of this region. From their personal coffee and perfume boy, to the VIP table, to the VIP car, to the special falkan shipped for His of Her Excellency from some impoverished African country, no mistakes can be made. According to the latest Forbes ranking of the world's richest individuals, there are 'only' 31 Arab billionaires who carry a combined wealth of $126.6 billion, or $4.1 billion per individual. That seems rather modest compared to the number of millionnaires and billionaires globally, but considering that the Middle East represents only something like 5% of world's population and that the wealth is so tightly controlled, make no mistake about the implications of these figures.
Children are often asked what they would like to become when they grow up, and I think I have now finally found my answer; a sheikh in a Gulf country! Please note that sheikh is a gender sensitive term, and I am not sure whether I would want to be a Sheikha. Let's face it, women in the Gulf, even if they can drive and interact with their professors not only through a screen as is the case in Saudi, and even those lucky few born in royal families, are not in the same league. But this has not stopped the trend adopted by a few tricky parents in this part of the world to name their daughters 'Sheikha'.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
jordan, israel and everything in between...
10 days in any other part of the world would not and could not have been the same. a 10 day trip in the middle east even in circumstances where nothing and no one explodes, threatens to explode or pose any other physical danger can be, if not physical, than at least a mind-blowing experience no matter how mentally you think you might be prepared for it. In 10 days, most of which I spent in Jordan in a conference, I managed to enter a country I never intended to go to (by mistake), witness an almost-war and meet people who are part of an actual war - all of this without intending any of the above to happen. I sometimes have the impression that in this part of the world, 'search for truth' or 'discovery of facts' is useless, reality is rubbed under one's nose and showered effortlessly. these little tidbits of local reality demonstrate undeniable complexity of life in the middle east in a way that no conventional media can do justice. perhaps some mediums are not meant to depict some things.
In fact, a friend recently forwarded to me the following article as a joke (www.theonion.com/content/news/middle_east_conflict_intensifies). It clearly cannot said to be deep or particularly knowledgeable and yet it captures as much of the reality of the various middle east conflicts, maybe- conflicts and almost-conflicts as any other mainstream piece of journalism on the region, likely to be written by someone dogmatically attached to some untenable ideal of 'how things ought to be', whether sunni or shia, jewish or muslim.
The violence has become habitual to the point of being banal. The news of a bomb in an Iraqi market is as unsurprising as a suicide bomber in Israel, as unsurprising as an IDF airstrike on Gaza as unsuprising (and yet astonishing!) positive assessment of the Iraq war by a US general (even one who claims authorship of his speech). the analysis of the events is usually as banal as these events have become.
a lifetime in a small european city can give me enough inspiration to produce a semi-constipated article about some local town developments, months in paris give me the inspiration to write a few stories, 10 days in the middle east and i genuinely do not know where to begin. there is so much similarity between all the conflicting parties and yet a sea of difference, so much hope and yet walls of dispair, so much development and yet so much poverty and underdevelopment, so much religion and spirit and yet violence that undermines any trust in religion and faith in humankind.
my travel plans entailed no more than a quiet trip from amman to jerusalem and then back to paris through tel a viv, no flights over baghdad or syria and yet i feel like i go the taste of all of the above. having talked to a few locals that have attempted to cross the jordanian border and cross through the west bank to jerusalem, i got mixed impressions including the possibility of spending 5 hours in 35 degree heat in 2 taxis and a bus that brings passangers between the two borders. I have never heard of a more elaborate border crossing procedure, but nothing is to be taken for granted: there are the palestinian refugees that no arab country in the region seems to hear about, the iraqi refugees that jordan is trying to stop at its borders, and the general atmosphere of an uneasy peace. so, I get on the plane for what will likely be the shortest trip of my life - if not for the fact that royal jordanian does not have the best 'parking spot' at ben gurion airport, the whole flight would have taken 20 mins.
Getting to israel was going to only be half of my problem, getting to my appointments, as I soon realised, was going to be much more complicated. Some, like the embassies which are all located in East Jerusalem for what I suspect are political statement reasons, can be easily found and subject to a number of security checks and business card verifications, accessed. (Such political statements are somewhat ironic, particularly for the Brits that on some sunny day in 1948 promised this piece of land to the jews, the hashemites and the palestinians. the brits have since made other promises and their office in jerusalem is not an embassy but carries a politically correct name of a consulate). Please mind the gap.
Locating 'non-consulate' premises such as local NGOs, think tanks and even offices of international organisations, requires more careful planning. The World Bank office for instance, does not seem to have either a street or a PO address, the primary identifier being sister Mary's school. one place i was not expecting to look for a 'sister Mary school' is palestine. when I arrive there, I realise that the price of the taxi ride includes the uncertainty factor for the taxi driver who might not be easily allowed back into Israel...and that is how I learn that I am actually no longer there. but where am I? apparently, that is not a question any local can answer. since the separation wall is being constructed, it is unclear whether this territory will be annexed to israel or to PA, when and on what terms. for the moment, i am in a grey area, which, momentarily, bring to mind images of Hamas shaking kalashnikovs on the streets of Gaza. But not here or at least not now, life is quiet in the small surrounding village with rose orchards and olive trees.
I am standing on the balcony of the local office housing international organisations with a local official who signs as he tells me the history of his family and his undeniable roots to this land, which no european or north american could ever understand, it is a feeling transcending religion and nationalism, it is a personal feeling, close to the heart of every local. I stand there choking on tears and trying my hardest to appear professional. i never thought that on some random balcony somewhere between ramallah and jerusalem i was going to realise the difference between having sympathy for someone and feeling for someone. it is morally easy to dismiss hamas militias making regular appearances on fox news, it is simply incomparable to do the same with someone who is a complete outlier of this image, someone who could pass for an israeli, for a french - except he was born palestinian.
I managed to re-enter the Israeli proper despite my driver's insistence to the local border officer that his name is Henry (he was actually a Palestinian christian) and the lack of an israeli stamp in my passport to which he didn't take kindly. I think this was probably the only situation where my suit was useful during this whole trip! back to the west jerusalem, i sat down at hillel cafe not too far from Sbarro pizza and all the other cafes on jaffa street around ben yahuda which have been blown up time and again during the intifada. its a difficult feeling being on both sides of the wall, being on both sides of the war. Even not many war correspondants have managed it, aside from the likes of robert fisk (see his latest 'war of civilisations'). for the rest of my trip, I felt like a non-combattant caught up in a familiar conflict having switched armies. Was I deserter temporarily or a permanent defector? I am afriad neither.
in the days to come, i tried to reconcile internally the narratives of the palestinians with those of the israelis I have met. I have to admit to failure. The first thing I saw when I opened the paper at that hillel cafe in front of the bombed restaurants was the IDF flights over Syria, which to this day remains as wrapped in mistery as a new born in a baby blanket. The second, and equally disturbing headline was the neo-nazi attacks on religious jews and foreigners by FSU immigrants to Israel. Although the physical security situation seems to have improved as compared to my last visit during the Intifada, the climate of rifts within the respective community of Israelis seem evident. While the Palestinians remain divided along Fatah-Hamas and tribal affiliations in the Arafat vacuum, the Israelis do not seem as an integrated whole either. It is not only that the two narratives do not reconcile, it is difficult to even identify a narrative.
Each clings desperately to their side of the story, and tries to justify injustice by another injustice. And just like that, on my flight back to Paris through Amman (which I randomly discovered was on no other day than 9/11), there was another attack on an Israeli army base in Gaza with another 70 army teenagers injured. In the Amman airport, I just did not feel like arguing with a american sitting next to me full of opinions on cnn bias towards the israeli side and the too generous coverage this attack was receiving. I was offended perhaps but too tired to take sides and argue and explain. too distracted by the sight of a little iraqi boy travelling through amman to get plastic surgery after someone had intentionally set him on fire. on 9/11, i would have hoped for people if not to 'feel for someone', than to at least have the humility to sympathize. And until my next trip to the middle east, I am afraid I will stop here.
10 days in any other part of the world would not and could not have been the same. a 10 day trip in the middle east even in circumstances where nothing and no one explodes, threatens to explode or pose any other physical danger can be, if not physical, than at least a mind-blowing experience no matter how mentally you think you might be prepared for it. In 10 days, most of which I spent in Jordan in a conference, I managed to enter a country I never intended to go to (by mistake), witness an almost-war and meet people who are part of an actual war - all of this without intending any of the above to happen. I sometimes have the impression that in this part of the world, 'search for truth' or 'discovery of facts' is useless, reality is rubbed under one's nose and showered effortlessly. these little tidbits of local reality demonstrate undeniable complexity of life in the middle east in a way that no conventional media can do justice. perhaps some mediums are not meant to depict some things.
In fact, a friend recently forwarded to me the following article as a joke (www.theonion.com/content/news/middle_east_conflict_intensifies). It clearly cannot said to be deep or particularly knowledgeable and yet it captures as much of the reality of the various middle east conflicts, maybe- conflicts and almost-conflicts as any other mainstream piece of journalism on the region, likely to be written by someone dogmatically attached to some untenable ideal of 'how things ought to be', whether sunni or shia, jewish or muslim.
The violence has become habitual to the point of being banal. The news of a bomb in an Iraqi market is as unsurprising as a suicide bomber in Israel, as unsurprising as an IDF airstrike on Gaza as unsuprising (and yet astonishing!) positive assessment of the Iraq war by a US general (even one who claims authorship of his speech). the analysis of the events is usually as banal as these events have become.
a lifetime in a small european city can give me enough inspiration to produce a semi-constipated article about some local town developments, months in paris give me the inspiration to write a few stories, 10 days in the middle east and i genuinely do not know where to begin. there is so much similarity between all the conflicting parties and yet a sea of difference, so much hope and yet walls of dispair, so much development and yet so much poverty and underdevelopment, so much religion and spirit and yet violence that undermines any trust in religion and faith in humankind.
my travel plans entailed no more than a quiet trip from amman to jerusalem and then back to paris through tel a viv, no flights over baghdad or syria and yet i feel like i go the taste of all of the above. having talked to a few locals that have attempted to cross the jordanian border and cross through the west bank to jerusalem, i got mixed impressions including the possibility of spending 5 hours in 35 degree heat in 2 taxis and a bus that brings passangers between the two borders. I have never heard of a more elaborate border crossing procedure, but nothing is to be taken for granted: there are the palestinian refugees that no arab country in the region seems to hear about, the iraqi refugees that jordan is trying to stop at its borders, and the general atmosphere of an uneasy peace. so, I get on the plane for what will likely be the shortest trip of my life - if not for the fact that royal jordanian does not have the best 'parking spot' at ben gurion airport, the whole flight would have taken 20 mins.
Getting to israel was going to only be half of my problem, getting to my appointments, as I soon realised, was going to be much more complicated. Some, like the embassies which are all located in East Jerusalem for what I suspect are political statement reasons, can be easily found and subject to a number of security checks and business card verifications, accessed. (Such political statements are somewhat ironic, particularly for the Brits that on some sunny day in 1948 promised this piece of land to the jews, the hashemites and the palestinians. the brits have since made other promises and their office in jerusalem is not an embassy but carries a politically correct name of a consulate). Please mind the gap.
Locating 'non-consulate' premises such as local NGOs, think tanks and even offices of international organisations, requires more careful planning. The World Bank office for instance, does not seem to have either a street or a PO address, the primary identifier being sister Mary's school. one place i was not expecting to look for a 'sister Mary school' is palestine. when I arrive there, I realise that the price of the taxi ride includes the uncertainty factor for the taxi driver who might not be easily allowed back into Israel...and that is how I learn that I am actually no longer there. but where am I? apparently, that is not a question any local can answer. since the separation wall is being constructed, it is unclear whether this territory will be annexed to israel or to PA, when and on what terms. for the moment, i am in a grey area, which, momentarily, bring to mind images of Hamas shaking kalashnikovs on the streets of Gaza. But not here or at least not now, life is quiet in the small surrounding village with rose orchards and olive trees.
I am standing on the balcony of the local office housing international organisations with a local official who signs as he tells me the history of his family and his undeniable roots to this land, which no european or north american could ever understand, it is a feeling transcending religion and nationalism, it is a personal feeling, close to the heart of every local. I stand there choking on tears and trying my hardest to appear professional. i never thought that on some random balcony somewhere between ramallah and jerusalem i was going to realise the difference between having sympathy for someone and feeling for someone. it is morally easy to dismiss hamas militias making regular appearances on fox news, it is simply incomparable to do the same with someone who is a complete outlier of this image, someone who could pass for an israeli, for a french - except he was born palestinian.
I managed to re-enter the Israeli proper despite my driver's insistence to the local border officer that his name is Henry (he was actually a Palestinian christian) and the lack of an israeli stamp in my passport to which he didn't take kindly. I think this was probably the only situation where my suit was useful during this whole trip! back to the west jerusalem, i sat down at hillel cafe not too far from Sbarro pizza and all the other cafes on jaffa street around ben yahuda which have been blown up time and again during the intifada. its a difficult feeling being on both sides of the wall, being on both sides of the war. Even not many war correspondants have managed it, aside from the likes of robert fisk (see his latest 'war of civilisations'). for the rest of my trip, I felt like a non-combattant caught up in a familiar conflict having switched armies. Was I deserter temporarily or a permanent defector? I am afriad neither.
in the days to come, i tried to reconcile internally the narratives of the palestinians with those of the israelis I have met. I have to admit to failure. The first thing I saw when I opened the paper at that hillel cafe in front of the bombed restaurants was the IDF flights over Syria, which to this day remains as wrapped in mistery as a new born in a baby blanket. The second, and equally disturbing headline was the neo-nazi attacks on religious jews and foreigners by FSU immigrants to Israel. Although the physical security situation seems to have improved as compared to my last visit during the Intifada, the climate of rifts within the respective community of Israelis seem evident. While the Palestinians remain divided along Fatah-Hamas and tribal affiliations in the Arafat vacuum, the Israelis do not seem as an integrated whole either. It is not only that the two narratives do not reconcile, it is difficult to even identify a narrative.
Each clings desperately to their side of the story, and tries to justify injustice by another injustice. And just like that, on my flight back to Paris through Amman (which I randomly discovered was on no other day than 9/11), there was another attack on an Israeli army base in Gaza with another 70 army teenagers injured. In the Amman airport, I just did not feel like arguing with a american sitting next to me full of opinions on cnn bias towards the israeli side and the too generous coverage this attack was receiving. I was offended perhaps but too tired to take sides and argue and explain. too distracted by the sight of a little iraqi boy travelling through amman to get plastic surgery after someone had intentionally set him on fire. on 9/11, i would have hoped for people if not to 'feel for someone', than to at least have the humility to sympathize. And until my next trip to the middle east, I am afraid I will stop here.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
my trip to Toronto or...reflections on what is a home
after 8 hours of a display of a rather mediocre american film making and the same amount of time of being slapped around by various body parts and carts of the passing stewardesses and stewards, i pass through the security, manage to pull off super-sized suitcase (only injuring one person in the process!) and finally...the doors open. i am out. after two years of wondering the world, with detours mostly in various countries in the middle east, and travelling almost exclusively between the 6 and the 16 arrondissements (i.e. home and office) in paris, i am back to home. or am i?
i cannot deny (and no offense to all of you my dear fellow ex-torontonians) that after being gone for that long, my impressions of the city changed quite remarkably. In most cases, it was a question of perception, in some, like the mushroom harbourfront boom, a case of a real city change. I will just highlight a few thoughts and impressions that were particularly striking to me...
Impression 1 (looking around me on the plane): why is what appears to be hmmm....a 10 year old girl three times my size? why does that not qualify for child abuse? I tell myself to think more politically correct and not stare. i am still shocked and as i am sitting there, tying to crank up to volume of my ipod to outplay the neighbouring kid whose video game consistently makes quite a noise when he kills someone or something (about every 10 seconds), it hits me that any hopes i had for a cheap shopping heaven are wildly misguided. yes, after verification, i am can honestly report: my size does not really exist in most stores (ok, with the exception of Gap Kids but then i didn't find anything that went with work suits). this is of course not to mention the style...i still wish i took the picture of someone wearing a super nice dress with these ridiculous looking galoches...I think they are called the crocks?
Impression 2 (sitting in a cute italian resto): what is wrong with this waiter and why does he keep coming every few minutes with all the questions about the food? is he trying to sleep with my friend or with me? why are the glasses of wine the size of three in france? the service so quick? the prices so cheap? i do the calculation again, and it is still dirt cheap compare to france. i think i could not even have a bottle of water for the price of two glasses of rather drinkable italian wine. ok, its not french wine, but it is drinkable still. at most other places, waiters kept asking me if i want red or white and seemed terribly confused by my insistance to know anything beyond the colour description (mental note to self: they think you are a snob). conclusion: no, the waiter is not trying to score, at least not that way, he just wants a tip. in france, we don't really tip, and in part because of this and in part because they just don't give a crap whether you meal suits you or not (after all, why would you order something you don't like?), the service is rather consistently non-existent. so, my suggestion: if you want some decent french food with a bad french accent and great service, do yourself a favour and eat at Le Select Bistro at Wellington and Spadina (thank you Neil).
Impression 3 (sitting in the US border office at Niagara falls): no, i didn't steal anything at duty free, i was just there with a friend who promised a quick procedure to renew a visa. mental note to self: a quick procedure to renew a visa does not exist. i should have known it from my rather trying experience trying to get a working visa in france. after having spent 3 hours in the hallway of this lovely office equipped with Fox news, i finally realised that my presence was really really not going to help my friend. this observation stroke me as i heard the following announcement on Fox: 'a middle eastern man is on the run on the main street of chicago, police is on the hunt...' i will not say anything of all the middle eastern men sitting in the same waiting room but my passport with stamps from just about every middle eastern country did cause additional questioning of my all-too-patient friend. Advice: if you need to renew a US visa, do not bring me with, it will substantially lengthen the procedure. and then you will have to take me out in order to compensate for the long wait. You see, its a lose-lose situation for you.
Impression 4 (trying to buy books on foreign policy of the middle east): please don't call me a geek, that is not nice. Astonished that some Indigo stores exclusively carry books on gardening, golf and cooking. If you don't cook, garden or play golf, sorry, tough luck. well, in the case of cooking i understand, and hope someone else does it for you. but gardening?! we don't garden in paris, that's what the public parks are for. no, those are not for taking a piss although some french men do not really follow that logic. so, yes, no gardening, in part because we have no houses, so unless you want to plant your favourites roses in the park where they could be subject to 'pissing' risk, i wouldn't recommend it. lesson: indigo at bloor and bay is the only decent bookstore where there is actually a foreign policy section. i learned that the biggest foreign policy issue in canada is the little bit of troops in afghanistan. and what gets front page of what is perhaps the most respectable paper, the Globe, is not 20 billion weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, but a local shooting at some club. After that, I had to buy the IHT every day.
aside from these rather specific episodes, there are other more general thoughts running through my head, with which i will not bore you...at least not any further. the vast nature of this country is just so incomprehensible to paris urbanites that are used to fight for every centimeter of closet space. the cosmopolitanism is really a model of incredible success and things like mosques and churches being located next door are a completely unique phenomena, which i assure you, do not replicate themselves in europe. the 'american dream' jobs (yes, i know you will not believe me) are much easier to get, even if you don't belong to a specific privileged circle of former lords. this should explain my successes in europe btw, my grandfather had some high class relatives i think...
and just when i finally started to get used to the suspiciously friendly people, the shining CN tower (copied from the eiffel tower), the banal music from the 80s in supermarkets, the 3 people size food portions, it was time to say goodbye. despite all the things that made me feel like a total doofus at times, there are things i knew i would miss before even leaving. my friends. the language. the queen streetcar eastbound. the american style coffee. the veggie restos. the lack of pretence at anything larger. not the american border patrol. not the onion rings on the menu. not the Gap kids.
all this melodrama made me think about the places i have called 'home'. back to paris, not unlike the feeling i have after coming back from my work travels, i was happy to be back home. it is i suppose strange to call a place where most people treat you as a tourist 'home', but paris has become, despite or because of my efforts.
i suppose one can only realise what is home when the place you thought was home is discovered to be no longer, or at least not in the same way. i haven't yet decided whether i am lucky to call two great cities home or whether i am just a 'globalised' human being with no preferences. everything is on the indifference curve...and now ladies and gentlemen, i invite you to revise your macroeconomics...or was is micro already?!
after 8 hours of a display of a rather mediocre american film making and the same amount of time of being slapped around by various body parts and carts of the passing stewardesses and stewards, i pass through the security, manage to pull off super-sized suitcase (only injuring one person in the process!) and finally...the doors open. i am out. after two years of wondering the world, with detours mostly in various countries in the middle east, and travelling almost exclusively between the 6 and the 16 arrondissements (i.e. home and office) in paris, i am back to home. or am i?
i cannot deny (and no offense to all of you my dear fellow ex-torontonians) that after being gone for that long, my impressions of the city changed quite remarkably. In most cases, it was a question of perception, in some, like the mushroom harbourfront boom, a case of a real city change. I will just highlight a few thoughts and impressions that were particularly striking to me...
Impression 1 (looking around me on the plane): why is what appears to be hmmm....a 10 year old girl three times my size? why does that not qualify for child abuse? I tell myself to think more politically correct and not stare. i am still shocked and as i am sitting there, tying to crank up to volume of my ipod to outplay the neighbouring kid whose video game consistently makes quite a noise when he kills someone or something (about every 10 seconds), it hits me that any hopes i had for a cheap shopping heaven are wildly misguided. yes, after verification, i am can honestly report: my size does not really exist in most stores (ok, with the exception of Gap Kids but then i didn't find anything that went with work suits). this is of course not to mention the style...i still wish i took the picture of someone wearing a super nice dress with these ridiculous looking galoches...I think they are called the crocks?
Impression 2 (sitting in a cute italian resto): what is wrong with this waiter and why does he keep coming every few minutes with all the questions about the food? is he trying to sleep with my friend or with me? why are the glasses of wine the size of three in france? the service so quick? the prices so cheap? i do the calculation again, and it is still dirt cheap compare to france. i think i could not even have a bottle of water for the price of two glasses of rather drinkable italian wine. ok, its not french wine, but it is drinkable still. at most other places, waiters kept asking me if i want red or white and seemed terribly confused by my insistance to know anything beyond the colour description (mental note to self: they think you are a snob). conclusion: no, the waiter is not trying to score, at least not that way, he just wants a tip. in france, we don't really tip, and in part because of this and in part because they just don't give a crap whether you meal suits you or not (after all, why would you order something you don't like?), the service is rather consistently non-existent. so, my suggestion: if you want some decent french food with a bad french accent and great service, do yourself a favour and eat at Le Select Bistro at Wellington and Spadina (thank you Neil).
Impression 3 (sitting in the US border office at Niagara falls): no, i didn't steal anything at duty free, i was just there with a friend who promised a quick procedure to renew a visa. mental note to self: a quick procedure to renew a visa does not exist. i should have known it from my rather trying experience trying to get a working visa in france. after having spent 3 hours in the hallway of this lovely office equipped with Fox news, i finally realised that my presence was really really not going to help my friend. this observation stroke me as i heard the following announcement on Fox: 'a middle eastern man is on the run on the main street of chicago, police is on the hunt...' i will not say anything of all the middle eastern men sitting in the same waiting room but my passport with stamps from just about every middle eastern country did cause additional questioning of my all-too-patient friend. Advice: if you need to renew a US visa, do not bring me with, it will substantially lengthen the procedure. and then you will have to take me out in order to compensate for the long wait. You see, its a lose-lose situation for you.
Impression 4 (trying to buy books on foreign policy of the middle east): please don't call me a geek, that is not nice. Astonished that some Indigo stores exclusively carry books on gardening, golf and cooking. If you don't cook, garden or play golf, sorry, tough luck. well, in the case of cooking i understand, and hope someone else does it for you. but gardening?! we don't garden in paris, that's what the public parks are for. no, those are not for taking a piss although some french men do not really follow that logic. so, yes, no gardening, in part because we have no houses, so unless you want to plant your favourites roses in the park where they could be subject to 'pissing' risk, i wouldn't recommend it. lesson: indigo at bloor and bay is the only decent bookstore where there is actually a foreign policy section. i learned that the biggest foreign policy issue in canada is the little bit of troops in afghanistan. and what gets front page of what is perhaps the most respectable paper, the Globe, is not 20 billion weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, but a local shooting at some club. After that, I had to buy the IHT every day.
aside from these rather specific episodes, there are other more general thoughts running through my head, with which i will not bore you...at least not any further. the vast nature of this country is just so incomprehensible to paris urbanites that are used to fight for every centimeter of closet space. the cosmopolitanism is really a model of incredible success and things like mosques and churches being located next door are a completely unique phenomena, which i assure you, do not replicate themselves in europe. the 'american dream' jobs (yes, i know you will not believe me) are much easier to get, even if you don't belong to a specific privileged circle of former lords. this should explain my successes in europe btw, my grandfather had some high class relatives i think...
and just when i finally started to get used to the suspiciously friendly people, the shining CN tower (copied from the eiffel tower), the banal music from the 80s in supermarkets, the 3 people size food portions, it was time to say goodbye. despite all the things that made me feel like a total doofus at times, there are things i knew i would miss before even leaving. my friends. the language. the queen streetcar eastbound. the american style coffee. the veggie restos. the lack of pretence at anything larger. not the american border patrol. not the onion rings on the menu. not the Gap kids.
all this melodrama made me think about the places i have called 'home'. back to paris, not unlike the feeling i have after coming back from my work travels, i was happy to be back home. it is i suppose strange to call a place where most people treat you as a tourist 'home', but paris has become, despite or because of my efforts.
i suppose one can only realise what is home when the place you thought was home is discovered to be no longer, or at least not in the same way. i haven't yet decided whether i am lucky to call two great cities home or whether i am just a 'globalised' human being with no preferences. everything is on the indifference curve...and now ladies and gentlemen, i invite you to revise your macroeconomics...or was is micro already?!
Sunday, July 15, 2007
fête de bastille à Paris - Bastille Day festivities
Just thought of sharing a few thoughts on what is perhaps the biggest nationwide holiday in france - fête national otherwise known as 14 juillet, when the french stormed and liberated bastille. for the french, this is THE holiday, the reason to be proud of france, to be french - en gros, the quintessential of the french identity. my professed ignorance of french history prompted me to do a little research on the holiday with the hope that it would make me feel just a little more french, that i could better understand the pride or whatever the millions of people who 'stormed' the center of paris felt yesterday. Yes, they still storm the center of paris, possibly not so differently as they stormed Bastille on the 14 of july 18 1789, but more on this later. my ignorance-prompted research revealed that the storm was indeed french style - too much fuss for too little outcome - the attack on Bastille apparently released 7...yes, not 70, 700 or 7000 prisoners.
are there are any parallels to be drawn between 1789 and 2007? well, allow me to contest that from my humble foreigner point of view, there are. first, on the storming aspect. imagine a city with over 2 million inhabitants and almost as much in tourists who flock to see fireworks in a city where all the roads are suddenly blocked by police which, by the way, does not much differ from the deployment of the UN troops in Lebanon - these are not some wimsy police cars we are talking about here, but serious ammunition, capable of dispersing crowds with water, breaking doors, etc. in fact, it is not only the police that is deployed but the army as well. perhaps they got bored after the parade and wanted to stay in town some more before they get shipped off to the aforementioned lebanon or an african state where france still tries to assert its non-colonial power. all in all, arriving for these fireworks which astonishingly started on time this year, requires some serious storming indeed.
so, one would think that storming the trocadero or another area from which these magnificent fireworks could be seen is where all the parallels would end. personally, I am not so convinced. although i cannot opine to know the details of this important national holiday, the 'retreating' part was not any easier than the 'storming' part. without further adieu - retreating is on foot. that is, no bus, practically no metro, and of course no cars. I don't know about you, but what is exactly the difference between middle ages and now? they retreated on foot or horses, we retreat on foot, which seeing as how i live across the river and basically across paris, is no walk in the park. so the tradition continues as it all begun, the french are making too much fuss for too little outcome. would i have known that i would have to have a claustrophobia attack and a 2 hour treck ahead of me, i would have hesitated whether it's all worth for 7 prisoners. but then, i am not french. even after the fête de la bastille. quel dommage.
Just thought of sharing a few thoughts on what is perhaps the biggest nationwide holiday in france - fête national otherwise known as 14 juillet, when the french stormed and liberated bastille. for the french, this is THE holiday, the reason to be proud of france, to be french - en gros, the quintessential of the french identity. my professed ignorance of french history prompted me to do a little research on the holiday with the hope that it would make me feel just a little more french, that i could better understand the pride or whatever the millions of people who 'stormed' the center of paris felt yesterday. Yes, they still storm the center of paris, possibly not so differently as they stormed Bastille on the 14 of july 18 1789, but more on this later. my ignorance-prompted research revealed that the storm was indeed french style - too much fuss for too little outcome - the attack on Bastille apparently released 7...yes, not 70, 700 or 7000 prisoners.
are there are any parallels to be drawn between 1789 and 2007? well, allow me to contest that from my humble foreigner point of view, there are. first, on the storming aspect. imagine a city with over 2 million inhabitants and almost as much in tourists who flock to see fireworks in a city where all the roads are suddenly blocked by police which, by the way, does not much differ from the deployment of the UN troops in Lebanon - these are not some wimsy police cars we are talking about here, but serious ammunition, capable of dispersing crowds with water, breaking doors, etc. in fact, it is not only the police that is deployed but the army as well. perhaps they got bored after the parade and wanted to stay in town some more before they get shipped off to the aforementioned lebanon or an african state where france still tries to assert its non-colonial power. all in all, arriving for these fireworks which astonishingly started on time this year, requires some serious storming indeed.
so, one would think that storming the trocadero or another area from which these magnificent fireworks could be seen is where all the parallels would end. personally, I am not so convinced. although i cannot opine to know the details of this important national holiday, the 'retreating' part was not any easier than the 'storming' part. without further adieu - retreating is on foot. that is, no bus, practically no metro, and of course no cars. I don't know about you, but what is exactly the difference between middle ages and now? they retreated on foot or horses, we retreat on foot, which seeing as how i live across the river and basically across paris, is no walk in the park. so the tradition continues as it all begun, the french are making too much fuss for too little outcome. would i have known that i would have to have a claustrophobia attack and a 2 hour treck ahead of me, i would have hesitated whether it's all worth for 7 prisoners. but then, i am not french. even after the fête de la bastille. quel dommage.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Is the virtual overtaking the real?
There is no point repeating the obvious, which by now became a standard phrase, an over-used observation of the reality that a blindman could not go unnoticed. Yes, the revolution in information and telecommunications technology has contributed to making us a globalised little village or a flat world, as Thomas Friedman likes to call it. It is certainly indisputable that the ability to connect to people across the world through audio conferencing facilities, cell phones and blackberries has increased exponentially as has purportedly the productivity of people working across the world. It’s as real is at gets, our virtual world. That is perhaps the problem as well as the solution. When the virtual becomes more real than the real, have a certain line been passed? Should we bother to notice that we are transitioning from the real to the virtual or should we barely re-define the meaning of real?
Unlike all the other impacts and consequences of the ICT revolution, this question has not become a topic of cliché conversation. This mélange of the real (or what we still think of real) and the virtual on humans has not been really addressed neither by those claiming to study globalization nor by anyone else for that matter. And yet, for what it’s worth, the record might be worth reviewing. Putting aside the early inventions of Sir Graham Bell, I suppose it all started with cell phones which only ten years ago were strongly suspected of giving brain cancer and were thus used with caution. Even in the absence of any health related concerns, these awkward apparatuses used to simply warm up too much to become addictive for most of us even most heat-in-the-ear-resistant creatures. Then came the ever-improving versions of cell phones (for many of us working people replacing home lines), msn messenger, skype, and finally the ultimate privacy-denying device – the blackberry. In parallel with this, online social, dating and professional tools have also flourished.
Probably not many of under 30-40 can honestly say to have never experimented with skype or messenger, not to mention the principal culprit – email. I have to admit, I obviously do use and abuse email and in enormous quantities and have come to accept it as the necessary evil. Ask yourself however, how many days have you passed in the office when at the end of what seems like a marathon without amphetamines, when at the end of the day you wonder what has happened between 9 and whatever the lucky hour that you finally pressed the ‘shut down’ button? Ask yourself also, what portion of the communication you have transmitted and received today, yesterday or the day before has been productive? Adam Gopnik, a New Yorker journalist, pointedly notes in his recent novel the rise of
“..a whole new class of communication that are defined as incomplete in advance of their delivery…Every device that has evolved from the telegram shares the same character. E-mails end with a suggestion of a phone call (‘Anyway, let’s meet and/or talk soon’), faxes with a request for email, answering machine with a request for a fax. All are devices of perpetually suspended communication.”
I don’t know about you, but I find more truth than humour in his observation. If you are still not convinced, please consider the following fact, which I myself I am also not sure whether to classify in the category of comedy or tragedy. According to an article recently published in the Wall Street Journal, 18% of respondents of poll admitted to reading their emails in the bathroom. I could never really understand newspaper reading in the bathroom, but email?!!
At the same time, all kinds of psychologist and life coaches are falling over each other to help us get on with our lives, having written boxes worth on ‘literature’ on time management (read here: dealing with the INBOX). In principle, inbox management seems simple for most of us who can find the delete button. Yet even this theoretically simple step appears to be a nothing-but-obvious self-questioning of whether to trash the received emails (which may contain tasks and requests I have not yet followed up) or deleting the no less precious emails proving that you have indeed I have been overworked and have tried to reply to all the emails, both useful and useless.
What about all the other ICT tools that have recently boomed further validating the flat world theory - the LinkedIns, Facebooks, Plaxos, and Second Lifes of our world, among many others. At first, I ignored the occasional request to join Plaxo, LinkedIn and others but I have to admit this resistance did not endure. For better or worse, I finally gave in. Since then, I am now plugged in not only to my work and personal accounts at all times, but I now also being spammed by email notifications and on top of it all, being pulled by sheer curiosity to have a daily ‘facebook check’ (okay, I confess … 3 times a day !). As if my regularly over-flowing inbox which regularly threatens me to stop sending emails unless I trash emails was not enough.
Apparently not. After all, you can really miss serious news if you leave your facebook page unmonitored for too long – one of my facebook friends went from single to married in 3 days, including the intermediate stage of being engaged and the finally the last stage – ‘it’s complicated’. No, he does not live in Las Vegas. Besides the addiction element, there is the guilt trip aspect as well – it is someone’s birthday, they have posted it for you to know it since they know you will surely forget to wish them. So, not only do you know but they know that you know. As if Birthday Alarm could not remain the master of that domain. And yet, for all the ‘faults’ of facebook, I would be too much of a hypocrite not to admit its addictive nature and its usefulness for being connected to dispersed contacts across the world.
What about blackberry and the latest and trendiest Second Life? Allow me to offer you my assessment of the first: a semi-useful, semi-destructive spamming device, which effectively reduces the attention spam of an adult to 2 minutes and reduces their basic politeness to nothing. Not only that, but as you might have noticed if you have clients or superiors equipped - or maybe I should say ‘armed’ with this device - their messages normally do not come with greetings, thanks you’s or sincerely yours, let alone other content useful details. Not to mention the fact that they come at all hours of the day given that the clients, the bosses and loved one increasingly find themselves in a different time zone then your dear self.
Thanks to the proliferation of blackberry and the increasing acceptance of the concise, to the point blackberry messages that effectively can be summed up as: just do it. (thank you Nike), I think we miss the point of it all in the midst of all the daily urgencies. My personal favourite: I need this by cob (close of business) today. I often wonder to myself: is the blackberry empowering its users to express urgencies that were hereto known or find urgencies hereto not defined as such? I also often wonder if the people on the sending end realize how those on the receiving end feel. I have to admit, sometimes I can’t help but think of myself as a sort of a glorified secretary, a-not-yet-automated answering machine. All in all, an intelligent (or so I hope) blackberry responding robot.
What about messaging and texting outside the professional context? Electronic gadgets supporters say that sms and emails are intrusive – funny our bosses never seem to think so. For me, this is a puzzling, not to say outright ridiculous idea. Why would a friend be afraid to ‘intrude’ on a Saturday afternoon? After all, what are we supposed to be doing on weekends than spend time with friends? Personally, I do not recall particularly receiving texts at all the weird hours of the morning, so the whole intruding theory is bypassing me entirely. What is intruding, or rather annoying, is the following sequence:
Friend: do you want to get together today;
me: sure, what do you have in mind?
friend: café x at location y?
me: I can meet at 4 but at the café across town
friend: 4.30 is better for me, etc. etc.
I have seen this kind of a dialogue continue for half an hour or more. Length of time required to sort out this conundrum over the phone: 30 seconds. Personally, I remain, except for rare occasions, yet to be convinced of the usefulness of sms as opposed to the ‘normal’ old-fashioned phone call. But, next time I have a funny thought during the funeral of a friends’ relative, I will make sure to be discreet and send them an sms, as opposed to wait until after.
Last but not least – Second Life. Second Life – for those of you yet unfamiliar (where have you been for the last 2 months by the way?!) is a downloadable programme enabling its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other in a structured environment. I would argue that before Second Life, we, as a society, have been merely standing at the door leading to the Virtual World. After Second Life, figuring out which world we are living in and what the distinctions between the virtual and the real are, is becoming increasingly difficult. Consider the concept with the full somberness it deserves: we are paying to interact with others on the computer.
And not only that, we are now suing each other on Second Life. No, this is not some sort of a twisted joke. A first law suit related to Second Life has been registered last year, in which a Pennsylvania lawyer was suing the publisher of the rapidly growing online world Second Life, alleging that Second Life has unfairly confiscated tens of thousands of dollars worth of his virtual land and other property, which he has previously bought. Note the key terms here: bought virtual property, suing company for confiscating his virtual property. Unfairness and even breach of law is being invoked. ¨Perhaps I am simple minded but I have one recommendation to our plaintiff here: get a life. Clarification: a real life.
So here I am in the midst of our wonderfully electronic powered world and I am forced to conclude the following - the day when we are, or at least some among us, are running away from technology might not be far away. Personally, I might myself one day in not too distant future be tempted to desert the virtual world. No, I would not dare cut myself off completely for I couldn’t take the risk of not being able to reach anyone. After all, if I am not on facebook, LinkedIn, plaxo, while at the same time being logged in on msn messenger and skype and patiently waiting for a vibration of my cell phone (which these days only vibrates with messages but rarely rings with actual calls), I might simply risk being forgotten. You might think I exaggerate, but try it.
There is no point repeating the obvious, which by now became a standard phrase, an over-used observation of the reality that a blindman could not go unnoticed. Yes, the revolution in information and telecommunications technology has contributed to making us a globalised little village or a flat world, as Thomas Friedman likes to call it. It is certainly indisputable that the ability to connect to people across the world through audio conferencing facilities, cell phones and blackberries has increased exponentially as has purportedly the productivity of people working across the world. It’s as real is at gets, our virtual world. That is perhaps the problem as well as the solution. When the virtual becomes more real than the real, have a certain line been passed? Should we bother to notice that we are transitioning from the real to the virtual or should we barely re-define the meaning of real?
Unlike all the other impacts and consequences of the ICT revolution, this question has not become a topic of cliché conversation. This mélange of the real (or what we still think of real) and the virtual on humans has not been really addressed neither by those claiming to study globalization nor by anyone else for that matter. And yet, for what it’s worth, the record might be worth reviewing. Putting aside the early inventions of Sir Graham Bell, I suppose it all started with cell phones which only ten years ago were strongly suspected of giving brain cancer and were thus used with caution. Even in the absence of any health related concerns, these awkward apparatuses used to simply warm up too much to become addictive for most of us even most heat-in-the-ear-resistant creatures. Then came the ever-improving versions of cell phones (for many of us working people replacing home lines), msn messenger, skype, and finally the ultimate privacy-denying device – the blackberry. In parallel with this, online social, dating and professional tools have also flourished.
Probably not many of under 30-40 can honestly say to have never experimented with skype or messenger, not to mention the principal culprit – email. I have to admit, I obviously do use and abuse email and in enormous quantities and have come to accept it as the necessary evil. Ask yourself however, how many days have you passed in the office when at the end of what seems like a marathon without amphetamines, when at the end of the day you wonder what has happened between 9 and whatever the lucky hour that you finally pressed the ‘shut down’ button? Ask yourself also, what portion of the communication you have transmitted and received today, yesterday or the day before has been productive? Adam Gopnik, a New Yorker journalist, pointedly notes in his recent novel the rise of
“..a whole new class of communication that are defined as incomplete in advance of their delivery…Every device that has evolved from the telegram shares the same character. E-mails end with a suggestion of a phone call (‘Anyway, let’s meet and/or talk soon’), faxes with a request for email, answering machine with a request for a fax. All are devices of perpetually suspended communication.”
I don’t know about you, but I find more truth than humour in his observation. If you are still not convinced, please consider the following fact, which I myself I am also not sure whether to classify in the category of comedy or tragedy. According to an article recently published in the Wall Street Journal, 18% of respondents of poll admitted to reading their emails in the bathroom. I could never really understand newspaper reading in the bathroom, but email?!!
At the same time, all kinds of psychologist and life coaches are falling over each other to help us get on with our lives, having written boxes worth on ‘literature’ on time management (read here: dealing with the INBOX). In principle, inbox management seems simple for most of us who can find the delete button. Yet even this theoretically simple step appears to be a nothing-but-obvious self-questioning of whether to trash the received emails (which may contain tasks and requests I have not yet followed up) or deleting the no less precious emails proving that you have indeed I have been overworked and have tried to reply to all the emails, both useful and useless.
What about all the other ICT tools that have recently boomed further validating the flat world theory - the LinkedIns, Facebooks, Plaxos, and Second Lifes of our world, among many others. At first, I ignored the occasional request to join Plaxo, LinkedIn and others but I have to admit this resistance did not endure. For better or worse, I finally gave in. Since then, I am now plugged in not only to my work and personal accounts at all times, but I now also being spammed by email notifications and on top of it all, being pulled by sheer curiosity to have a daily ‘facebook check’ (okay, I confess … 3 times a day !). As if my regularly over-flowing inbox which regularly threatens me to stop sending emails unless I trash emails was not enough.
Apparently not. After all, you can really miss serious news if you leave your facebook page unmonitored for too long – one of my facebook friends went from single to married in 3 days, including the intermediate stage of being engaged and the finally the last stage – ‘it’s complicated’. No, he does not live in Las Vegas. Besides the addiction element, there is the guilt trip aspect as well – it is someone’s birthday, they have posted it for you to know it since they know you will surely forget to wish them. So, not only do you know but they know that you know. As if Birthday Alarm could not remain the master of that domain. And yet, for all the ‘faults’ of facebook, I would be too much of a hypocrite not to admit its addictive nature and its usefulness for being connected to dispersed contacts across the world.
What about blackberry and the latest and trendiest Second Life? Allow me to offer you my assessment of the first: a semi-useful, semi-destructive spamming device, which effectively reduces the attention spam of an adult to 2 minutes and reduces their basic politeness to nothing. Not only that, but as you might have noticed if you have clients or superiors equipped - or maybe I should say ‘armed’ with this device - their messages normally do not come with greetings, thanks you’s or sincerely yours, let alone other content useful details. Not to mention the fact that they come at all hours of the day given that the clients, the bosses and loved one increasingly find themselves in a different time zone then your dear self.
Thanks to the proliferation of blackberry and the increasing acceptance of the concise, to the point blackberry messages that effectively can be summed up as: just do it. (thank you Nike), I think we miss the point of it all in the midst of all the daily urgencies. My personal favourite: I need this by cob (close of business) today. I often wonder to myself: is the blackberry empowering its users to express urgencies that were hereto known or find urgencies hereto not defined as such? I also often wonder if the people on the sending end realize how those on the receiving end feel. I have to admit, sometimes I can’t help but think of myself as a sort of a glorified secretary, a-not-yet-automated answering machine. All in all, an intelligent (or so I hope) blackberry responding robot.
What about messaging and texting outside the professional context? Electronic gadgets supporters say that sms and emails are intrusive – funny our bosses never seem to think so. For me, this is a puzzling, not to say outright ridiculous idea. Why would a friend be afraid to ‘intrude’ on a Saturday afternoon? After all, what are we supposed to be doing on weekends than spend time with friends? Personally, I do not recall particularly receiving texts at all the weird hours of the morning, so the whole intruding theory is bypassing me entirely. What is intruding, or rather annoying, is the following sequence:
Friend: do you want to get together today;
me: sure, what do you have in mind?
friend: café x at location y?
me: I can meet at 4 but at the café across town
friend: 4.30 is better for me, etc. etc.
I have seen this kind of a dialogue continue for half an hour or more. Length of time required to sort out this conundrum over the phone: 30 seconds. Personally, I remain, except for rare occasions, yet to be convinced of the usefulness of sms as opposed to the ‘normal’ old-fashioned phone call. But, next time I have a funny thought during the funeral of a friends’ relative, I will make sure to be discreet and send them an sms, as opposed to wait until after.
Last but not least – Second Life. Second Life – for those of you yet unfamiliar (where have you been for the last 2 months by the way?!) is a downloadable programme enabling its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other in a structured environment. I would argue that before Second Life, we, as a society, have been merely standing at the door leading to the Virtual World. After Second Life, figuring out which world we are living in and what the distinctions between the virtual and the real are, is becoming increasingly difficult. Consider the concept with the full somberness it deserves: we are paying to interact with others on the computer.
And not only that, we are now suing each other on Second Life. No, this is not some sort of a twisted joke. A first law suit related to Second Life has been registered last year, in which a Pennsylvania lawyer was suing the publisher of the rapidly growing online world Second Life, alleging that Second Life has unfairly confiscated tens of thousands of dollars worth of his virtual land and other property, which he has previously bought. Note the key terms here: bought virtual property, suing company for confiscating his virtual property. Unfairness and even breach of law is being invoked. ¨Perhaps I am simple minded but I have one recommendation to our plaintiff here: get a life. Clarification: a real life.
So here I am in the midst of our wonderfully electronic powered world and I am forced to conclude the following - the day when we are, or at least some among us, are running away from technology might not be far away. Personally, I might myself one day in not too distant future be tempted to desert the virtual world. No, I would not dare cut myself off completely for I couldn’t take the risk of not being able to reach anyone. After all, if I am not on facebook, LinkedIn, plaxo, while at the same time being logged in on msn messenger and skype and patiently waiting for a vibration of my cell phone (which these days only vibrates with messages but rarely rings with actual calls), I might simply risk being forgotten. You might think I exaggerate, but try it.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
begging tips...on champs elysee
this will not be one my usually long and somewhat serious posts, so if this is what you are looking for, you light not want to read on.
unlike in most european countries i have been to, begging in france is an active activity. it is not at all about standing in the corner of a store, a market or a metro station, but rather about going out there actively to explain people the reasons why the situation has some about and why should should they be particularly touched by the beggar's particular story as opposed to that of competitors. i have gotten quite used to this sort of a strategy in the paris metro. bonjour madames et messieurs, je suis au chomâge...i can say i have heard this a few times before.
yesterday i have, however heard a new and i have to admit, a rather creative one - i was stopped to ask whether my phone can be borrowed to call the police. how nice of him, really, he was even taking the responsibility to call the police, after i am assuming he took off with my phone. now here i must give credit where it's due, this was not the usual chomâge story...
voila...some creativity lessons for all of us boring people out there
bon dimanche
this will not be one my usually long and somewhat serious posts, so if this is what you are looking for, you light not want to read on.
unlike in most european countries i have been to, begging in france is an active activity. it is not at all about standing in the corner of a store, a market or a metro station, but rather about going out there actively to explain people the reasons why the situation has some about and why should should they be particularly touched by the beggar's particular story as opposed to that of competitors. i have gotten quite used to this sort of a strategy in the paris metro. bonjour madames et messieurs, je suis au chomâge...i can say i have heard this a few times before.
yesterday i have, however heard a new and i have to admit, a rather creative one - i was stopped to ask whether my phone can be borrowed to call the police. how nice of him, really, he was even taking the responsibility to call the police, after i am assuming he took off with my phone. now here i must give credit where it's due, this was not the usual chomâge story...
voila...some creativity lessons for all of us boring people out there
bon dimanche
Thursday, May 03, 2007
On global warming, North Africa and French presidential elections
In a place called Texas, it may still be denied but in Paris it is a subject not only of the usual small talk but an earnest bewilderment and a honest debate. The weather. For those of you my dear friends who are still in Canada, please don't mumble terrible things about me when i say this but the reality we are hit with a tropical weather. I had to perform a sort of striptease on the way to the office one bright morning not so long ago in the following order - coat off, jacket off, sweater off...and I am sorry to be so boring but i had to stop there - not all parisians did.
I know april an august start with the same letter but i thought that all other parallels end there, apparently not - we now have august weather in april figure it. a sort of paris in the middle east phonemenon. so while all of you my dear canadians are still angrily scraping snow off your frozen wiendshields i am trying to figure out how to strip down without being indecent since, as those of you reading my previous emails know, Paris is not airconditionned. as a general matter of fact. I was explained succinctly once - c'est ne pas possible. that about summarises it. there is one obvious benefit of this global warming effects for me - aside from not having to scrape snow off my wiendshield - i am now in the same climate in morocco and tunisia and paris. which is not exaclty the same for those poor seals who one bright morning just took off on one large but melting piece of ice, titanic style from one of the north provinces of canada. yes, as you can see i read some canadian press although as you can also see not so attentively.
So, coming back to this banal topic of weather and middle east, which loyally finds its way into everything i write these days, i have to say at least i don't get sick travelling anymore, which is otherwise not so difficult given my 24-48 hours mission impossible style trips to North Africa. Yes, despite all our technological advances the idea of going to morocco or tunisia for 1 day sounded a little foreward to me, but exprience shows that if you move like an energizer bunny on a fresh battery, you can just squeeze it in without missing any planes, traines or automobiles (sorry I couldn't resist the reference to an all time classic). and if you don't believe me, i did it last week to paris-tunis-paris in that sort of style.
so i arrive at some time close to midnight and have to decide between a dozen of taxi drivers who are fighting over who will get this poor sucker that they can just tell they can rip off. so i pick a dude who looks the least scary of them all. Please remind me next time not to trust my intuition re: taxi drivers. I had to sit next to him while he drilled me the whole way about all the details about my personal life: he was rather suprised to find out I am married and with children. Just a little white lie to stamp out any adventurous ideas...
He didnt think I was that old...I didn't think he was going to be so anoying. so it seemed we were even until he pulled over somewhere in the bushes which was apparently a gas station and proceeded to explain that since I am his first client (it was now 12 at night) i have to pay for gas if i want to get to the hotel. To make a very long story very short, I don't think i can explain in words my relief when i finally saw the name of the hotel on the skyline and decided to take my finger of the dial button ( my brilliant strategy was to call home to tell my boyfriend i am lost with a wierd taxi driver in tunis). never underestimate the intelligence of a woman. but to give the dude a credit, he only ripped me off once although he could have done it many times seeing as how i would have paid anything to just get to my hotel. a sort of an honest rip off, if you will.
the rest of my taxi drivers where illiterate enough to take me for a french tourist and of course feeling comelled to share their political views on the french election with me. they all seem to support the socialist candidate who doesnt mind if the whole of africa settles in france. the socialists still have this cute a fuzzy idea that everyone call live here in a big happy family even without periodically setting everything on fire in some areas.
In my missions imposible, i have also had to drastically adjust my expectations of just about everything - hotels, travel habits, accent (better speak with Arabic accent otherwise no one understands street names!) I know this will probably astound most of you who know me or those of you who has seen me travel before. I went from Queen of England style of different suitcases dedicated to different parts of my warderobe plus a suitcase of reading to do on the plane to a roller case which magically fits all and in quantities that do not make the french security have panick attacks over possible explosives in my various parfume and other toiletries. I swear, next time they stop me i will just spray the whole bottle on myself before I surrender - just to prevent loosing another bottle of perfume on the security people, I am sure they have enough already!
I now even have a post missions impossible strategy. Once i get tired of them, I think I know what I will do - I will apply for a job with the Turkish government. I know this might again sound a little strange seeing as how I dont speak ay Turkish or do not know anything about Turkey except that the capital is Istanbul and that hourses share highways with cars and that no one except for store owners speak english - but...as a Turkish colleague convincingly explained to me recently: if one does not want to work ( and by that i mean at all); one gets a job with the Turkish government. Looking at him, I am starting to hear what the man is saying. Its sort of a flexible hours job with regular nap breaks in the middle. So the cat is of the bag i am afriad on my retirement plan.
But before i retire, i will probably stay a few more years in this sometimes puzzling place called france where the second most discussed topic (after the tropical climate) is the presidential elections which will stop mr. chirac's 12 years of monarchical rule in the country. its been a semi-comical thing watching the elections in france. in Canada, i never found the world of canadian politics any more interesting that the blues games (both just seemed so utterly boring, sorry for all of you sports fans out there) but here politics is a different kind of animal - with many more interesting faces. here, we even had a socialist-bordering on marxist-bordering on patient of a mental institution candidate who suggested...please fasten your seatbelts before you finish reading the end of this sentence...to dissolve the stock market. by that i mean, extermnate, irradicate, annulate...all in the name of social justice.
Yesterday for the first time since chirac faced mitterand 12 years ago, we had two presidential candidates debate their respective presidential pacts. In general, it resembled a middle eastern souk, where you bargain until you can no longer and the sale person tries to look offended in the end that he could be pushed this low. On Sunday the cat is going to be out of the bag...for the sake of the frenchies I pray that we do not have return to socialism in france, otherwise i might as well return to my native odessa, except i would have to rewind the clock as well.
So please all the prayers for all of us frenchies and frenchies-wanna-be during the sunday mass please...shabbat prayers accepted as well.
In a place called Texas, it may still be denied but in Paris it is a subject not only of the usual small talk but an earnest bewilderment and a honest debate. The weather. For those of you my dear friends who are still in Canada, please don't mumble terrible things about me when i say this but the reality we are hit with a tropical weather. I had to perform a sort of striptease on the way to the office one bright morning not so long ago in the following order - coat off, jacket off, sweater off...and I am sorry to be so boring but i had to stop there - not all parisians did.
I know april an august start with the same letter but i thought that all other parallels end there, apparently not - we now have august weather in april figure it. a sort of paris in the middle east phonemenon. so while all of you my dear canadians are still angrily scraping snow off your frozen wiendshields i am trying to figure out how to strip down without being indecent since, as those of you reading my previous emails know, Paris is not airconditionned. as a general matter of fact. I was explained succinctly once - c'est ne pas possible. that about summarises it. there is one obvious benefit of this global warming effects for me - aside from not having to scrape snow off my wiendshield - i am now in the same climate in morocco and tunisia and paris. which is not exaclty the same for those poor seals who one bright morning just took off on one large but melting piece of ice, titanic style from one of the north provinces of canada. yes, as you can see i read some canadian press although as you can also see not so attentively.
So, coming back to this banal topic of weather and middle east, which loyally finds its way into everything i write these days, i have to say at least i don't get sick travelling anymore, which is otherwise not so difficult given my 24-48 hours mission impossible style trips to North Africa. Yes, despite all our technological advances the idea of going to morocco or tunisia for 1 day sounded a little foreward to me, but exprience shows that if you move like an energizer bunny on a fresh battery, you can just squeeze it in without missing any planes, traines or automobiles (sorry I couldn't resist the reference to an all time classic). and if you don't believe me, i did it last week to paris-tunis-paris in that sort of style.
so i arrive at some time close to midnight and have to decide between a dozen of taxi drivers who are fighting over who will get this poor sucker that they can just tell they can rip off. so i pick a dude who looks the least scary of them all. Please remind me next time not to trust my intuition re: taxi drivers. I had to sit next to him while he drilled me the whole way about all the details about my personal life: he was rather suprised to find out I am married and with children. Just a little white lie to stamp out any adventurous ideas...
He didnt think I was that old...I didn't think he was going to be so anoying. so it seemed we were even until he pulled over somewhere in the bushes which was apparently a gas station and proceeded to explain that since I am his first client (it was now 12 at night) i have to pay for gas if i want to get to the hotel. To make a very long story very short, I don't think i can explain in words my relief when i finally saw the name of the hotel on the skyline and decided to take my finger of the dial button ( my brilliant strategy was to call home to tell my boyfriend i am lost with a wierd taxi driver in tunis). never underestimate the intelligence of a woman. but to give the dude a credit, he only ripped me off once although he could have done it many times seeing as how i would have paid anything to just get to my hotel. a sort of an honest rip off, if you will.
the rest of my taxi drivers where illiterate enough to take me for a french tourist and of course feeling comelled to share their political views on the french election with me. they all seem to support the socialist candidate who doesnt mind if the whole of africa settles in france. the socialists still have this cute a fuzzy idea that everyone call live here in a big happy family even without periodically setting everything on fire in some areas.
In my missions imposible, i have also had to drastically adjust my expectations of just about everything - hotels, travel habits, accent (better speak with Arabic accent otherwise no one understands street names!) I know this will probably astound most of you who know me or those of you who has seen me travel before. I went from Queen of England style of different suitcases dedicated to different parts of my warderobe plus a suitcase of reading to do on the plane to a roller case which magically fits all and in quantities that do not make the french security have panick attacks over possible explosives in my various parfume and other toiletries. I swear, next time they stop me i will just spray the whole bottle on myself before I surrender - just to prevent loosing another bottle of perfume on the security people, I am sure they have enough already!
I now even have a post missions impossible strategy. Once i get tired of them, I think I know what I will do - I will apply for a job with the Turkish government. I know this might again sound a little strange seeing as how I dont speak ay Turkish or do not know anything about Turkey except that the capital is Istanbul and that hourses share highways with cars and that no one except for store owners speak english - but...as a Turkish colleague convincingly explained to me recently: if one does not want to work ( and by that i mean at all); one gets a job with the Turkish government. Looking at him, I am starting to hear what the man is saying. Its sort of a flexible hours job with regular nap breaks in the middle. So the cat is of the bag i am afriad on my retirement plan.
But before i retire, i will probably stay a few more years in this sometimes puzzling place called france where the second most discussed topic (after the tropical climate) is the presidential elections which will stop mr. chirac's 12 years of monarchical rule in the country. its been a semi-comical thing watching the elections in france. in Canada, i never found the world of canadian politics any more interesting that the blues games (both just seemed so utterly boring, sorry for all of you sports fans out there) but here politics is a different kind of animal - with many more interesting faces. here, we even had a socialist-bordering on marxist-bordering on patient of a mental institution candidate who suggested...please fasten your seatbelts before you finish reading the end of this sentence...to dissolve the stock market. by that i mean, extermnate, irradicate, annulate...all in the name of social justice.
Yesterday for the first time since chirac faced mitterand 12 years ago, we had two presidential candidates debate their respective presidential pacts. In general, it resembled a middle eastern souk, where you bargain until you can no longer and the sale person tries to look offended in the end that he could be pushed this low. On Sunday the cat is going to be out of the bag...for the sake of the frenchies I pray that we do not have return to socialism in france, otherwise i might as well return to my native odessa, except i would have to rewind the clock as well.
So please all the prayers for all of us frenchies and frenchies-wanna-be during the sunday mass please...shabbat prayers accepted as well.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
The difference between first world and third world is usually defined in income per capita. This is fundamentally wrong. The sole characteristic which is always relevant in differentianting developed from developing countries, is not income per capita (however expressed: puchasing power parity, nominal GDP per capita, etc.) but the income gap between 'the rich' and 'the poor'. In all developing countries, the rich control the majority of wealth while the poor have to content themselves with the remaining wealth which is also in large part generated by serving the upper classes. my last trip to morocco made be think of this divide, as well as the divide between the urban and the rural. Taken together, the income gap and the urban/rural divide are much more direct and easy means of gauging development then all the complicated economic theories can dream up.
Friday, February 16, 2007
A great shame
Reading the daily news, I stumbled onto this article today. These days, rarely are the news surprising, particularly those coming from the middle east. the headlines have been static for months: another bombing in baghdad, another denial by iran to stop their nuclear activities. Even the holocaust denial statements regularly coming of tehran are almost losing their impact on the international community. The following article published in Jeruslam Post is, on the other hand, deeply disturbing. The fact that israel itself has turned away from those who it was originally created to support is a betrayal is an unparalleled moral failure.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1170359865046&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
Reading the daily news, I stumbled onto this article today. These days, rarely are the news surprising, particularly those coming from the middle east. the headlines have been static for months: another bombing in baghdad, another denial by iran to stop their nuclear activities. Even the holocaust denial statements regularly coming of tehran are almost losing their impact on the international community. The following article published in Jeruslam Post is, on the other hand, deeply disturbing. The fact that israel itself has turned away from those who it was originally created to support is a betrayal is an unparalleled moral failure.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1170359865046&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
the new cold war - not as cold, but windy
The State Department press release issued on February 13 following the conference on Security Policy in Munich where the Russian president has made his now famous tirade, claims that "no shift is occuring between the US and Russian relations". According to Tony Snow, the White House spokesperson, "...the United States has been working aggressively, including with Russia, to work in a multilateral fashion on a
series of key issues." Is the White House intentionally downplaying what it understood a turning point of transatlantic relations, or is it 'playing stupid'?
The former alternative is unlikely given the strength of the commentary and the choice of venue for its delivery - after all, it could have been also delivered on lower levels and in a more bilateral fashion. One should also not forget Ms. Rice's doctorate in Cold War international relations. If no one else in the White House has received the signal correctly, it would be rather surprising if she did not.
A more plausible proposition would suggest that Putin's speech did succeed in raising some eyebrows in Washington and other capitals, yet its impact is being downplayed for the fear of creating a greater rift. This game of 'downplaying' played by Mr. Snow in his communique today is not so unfounded. First, the US has been once again been 'caught with their pants down' to borrow from a not especially bourgeoise but accurate expression. While Mr. Putin has recently been not as cooperative with his American brothers as his administration was during the early years of his presidency, the strength of his expression and his isolation of the US as the culprit has been of surprise to the US, even given the latest ideological disagreements over the Iraninan sanctions.
The second, and somewhat related reason behind American reluctance to respond in any stronger terms than saying that Russia is an 'important ally', is that Russia is seen as flexing muscles and is not being taken seriously. The Economist estimates Russia is still less of a player than it was since "it no longer has the network of Soviet client states." While the latter maybe true, this does not by any means that Russia is to be ignored in the international relations calculus. In this regard, Mr. Putin's speech served exaclty its purpose - not necessarily insigate a crisis in the cross-atlantic relations, but to remind the various audiences at Munich that hybernation is finished. The bear has long time shaken off the sleep in domestic matters including the high profile trial of Khodorkovsy and the recent oil nationalisations, aka Venezuela but with a different rhetoric.
Moscow's recent power struggles with satellite's states over gas arrangements already showed the western european states that Russia will not tolerate being marginalised in the European politics. Russia's current G8 presidency, although a mockery given these recent dynamics first with Ukraine and then with Belarus, is another reason not to take Russia's ambitions too lighlty.
The Economist may be right in noting that its satellite states are long gone and most wish to get amnesia to forget their soviet past. What it does not pick up on is the alliance of convinience, not necessarily ideology, between Russia and China. Supported by this dynamic, Russia has re-discovered a new source of power, re-established a long forgotten strategy, in addition to its typical natural resource weapon. This strategy previews greater involvement of Russia in the Middle East.
Thus, Russia is not to be ignored not only, and not even primarily, for its recent bullish behaviour vis-a-vis its European neighbours, but its growing willingness to present itself as a viable supporter (read:alternative) to a number of countries in the Middle East, thus re-engaging in the proxy war that characterised the Cold War. This involvement will play itself out not only by military deals with Iran and as analysts suspect other nations and 'factions'. It will also take form (and is already starting to do so) through official high level contacts in the region. Mr. Putin's high level visit to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar this week goes to demonstrate that the Munich tirade was not just a fit for attention, but perhaps a new 'suprise' act in Mr. Puntin's play. Suprise it is, since there have been no Presidential level visits to Saudi Arabia, for one, for approximately 80 years. A second surprise, certainly unnerving for the US, has been the apparent welcome received by the Russian president. A red carpet and a 21 gun salut was awaiting him in Saudi Arabia, a long term US ally, recently disillusioned by the process of Iraq stabilisation and increasingly worried about US inability to contain Iran.
Apparently, Middle East leaders as a whole are taking Russia seriously, and have granted Russia an observer status in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in 2005. Bilateral relations with the current government of Iran and Hamas are also strong. Saudi Arabia might just follow suit. This act may continue for long after he is gone and Mr. Puntin's appointed successor is sworn in. If so, the superpower confrontation, played out in the Middle East, maybe a deja vu of international relations. Perhaps not a full-blown Cold War, but a wind of the era?
The State Department press release issued on February 13 following the conference on Security Policy in Munich where the Russian president has made his now famous tirade, claims that "no shift is occuring between the US and Russian relations". According to Tony Snow, the White House spokesperson, "...the United States has been working aggressively, including with Russia, to work in a multilateral fashion on a
series of key issues." Is the White House intentionally downplaying what it understood a turning point of transatlantic relations, or is it 'playing stupid'?
The former alternative is unlikely given the strength of the commentary and the choice of venue for its delivery - after all, it could have been also delivered on lower levels and in a more bilateral fashion. One should also not forget Ms. Rice's doctorate in Cold War international relations. If no one else in the White House has received the signal correctly, it would be rather surprising if she did not.
A more plausible proposition would suggest that Putin's speech did succeed in raising some eyebrows in Washington and other capitals, yet its impact is being downplayed for the fear of creating a greater rift. This game of 'downplaying' played by Mr. Snow in his communique today is not so unfounded. First, the US has been once again been 'caught with their pants down' to borrow from a not especially bourgeoise but accurate expression. While Mr. Putin has recently been not as cooperative with his American brothers as his administration was during the early years of his presidency, the strength of his expression and his isolation of the US as the culprit has been of surprise to the US, even given the latest ideological disagreements over the Iraninan sanctions.
The second, and somewhat related reason behind American reluctance to respond in any stronger terms than saying that Russia is an 'important ally', is that Russia is seen as flexing muscles and is not being taken seriously. The Economist estimates Russia is still less of a player than it was since "it no longer has the network of Soviet client states." While the latter maybe true, this does not by any means that Russia is to be ignored in the international relations calculus. In this regard, Mr. Putin's speech served exaclty its purpose - not necessarily insigate a crisis in the cross-atlantic relations, but to remind the various audiences at Munich that hybernation is finished. The bear has long time shaken off the sleep in domestic matters including the high profile trial of Khodorkovsy and the recent oil nationalisations, aka Venezuela but with a different rhetoric.
Moscow's recent power struggles with satellite's states over gas arrangements already showed the western european states that Russia will not tolerate being marginalised in the European politics. Russia's current G8 presidency, although a mockery given these recent dynamics first with Ukraine and then with Belarus, is another reason not to take Russia's ambitions too lighlty.
The Economist may be right in noting that its satellite states are long gone and most wish to get amnesia to forget their soviet past. What it does not pick up on is the alliance of convinience, not necessarily ideology, between Russia and China. Supported by this dynamic, Russia has re-discovered a new source of power, re-established a long forgotten strategy, in addition to its typical natural resource weapon. This strategy previews greater involvement of Russia in the Middle East.
Thus, Russia is not to be ignored not only, and not even primarily, for its recent bullish behaviour vis-a-vis its European neighbours, but its growing willingness to present itself as a viable supporter (read:alternative) to a number of countries in the Middle East, thus re-engaging in the proxy war that characterised the Cold War. This involvement will play itself out not only by military deals with Iran and as analysts suspect other nations and 'factions'. It will also take form (and is already starting to do so) through official high level contacts in the region. Mr. Putin's high level visit to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar this week goes to demonstrate that the Munich tirade was not just a fit for attention, but perhaps a new 'suprise' act in Mr. Puntin's play. Suprise it is, since there have been no Presidential level visits to Saudi Arabia, for one, for approximately 80 years. A second surprise, certainly unnerving for the US, has been the apparent welcome received by the Russian president. A red carpet and a 21 gun salut was awaiting him in Saudi Arabia, a long term US ally, recently disillusioned by the process of Iraq stabilisation and increasingly worried about US inability to contain Iran.
Apparently, Middle East leaders as a whole are taking Russia seriously, and have granted Russia an observer status in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in 2005. Bilateral relations with the current government of Iran and Hamas are also strong. Saudi Arabia might just follow suit. This act may continue for long after he is gone and Mr. Puntin's appointed successor is sworn in. If so, the superpower confrontation, played out in the Middle East, maybe a deja vu of international relations. Perhaps not a full-blown Cold War, but a wind of the era?
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Segolene's thoughts on Canada...
While I was never particularly fascinated by domestic politics in Canada, I have to admit the French scene is much more engaging not only due to the upcoming elections and the challenges associated with registering for them, but also simply due to the french political culture. After all, in what other country will you find political debates where the politicians are talking in complete unison? by 'unison' I do not mean that they are not in complete agreement, quite opposite, they are in a state of constant and complete disagreement on everything, as a matter of principle of course. by 'unison' I mean that they are talking at the same time, after all this strategy, however unfamiliar to foreigners, avoids them actually have to listen to the opponent's opinions and argue against them as opposed to reiterate the points carefully drafted backstage by their campaign managers.
And in what other country is there such a range of political opinion? From Le Penn who keeps a consistently racist and so-far-right-that-left-cannot-even-be-seen-on-the-horizon rhetoric (one no longer knows whether to take seriously or just to forgive him due his old age) to my personal favourite Segolene Royal. Sorry, Segolene I don't have the accents on my keyboard!
While Segolene's feminine talk and soft approach (read: no approach) politics - I want to give everthing they deserve to my people! - may work with some at home, it just doesn't seem to pay off for the poor lady abroad. To prove her political maturity, Segolene has been increasing her appearances on the international political scene. I found particularly impactful her series of tea meeting with Chinese housewifes. Apparently, the number 10 of the Chinese cabinet was too busy to see her.
Apparently, local political incompetence refuses to stay local. Segolene's latest commentary is spreading outside her native France to Lebanon, China and now...Canada! Selon Segolene, Quebec should have the independence it deserves. At least this remark demonstrates the consistency of Ms. Royal's approach - neither does she understand the practical implications of her domestic propositions, nor does she seem to understand those of her foreign policy statements. And while on the foreign policy scene Canada is most definitely not a loud player, Ms. Royal's remarks have managed to rub even the Canadians the wrong way.
http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/elections-2007/0,,3383704,00-mot-royal-qui-herisse-canadiens-.html
While I was never particularly fascinated by domestic politics in Canada, I have to admit the French scene is much more engaging not only due to the upcoming elections and the challenges associated with registering for them, but also simply due to the french political culture. After all, in what other country will you find political debates where the politicians are talking in complete unison? by 'unison' I do not mean that they are not in complete agreement, quite opposite, they are in a state of constant and complete disagreement on everything, as a matter of principle of course. by 'unison' I mean that they are talking at the same time, after all this strategy, however unfamiliar to foreigners, avoids them actually have to listen to the opponent's opinions and argue against them as opposed to reiterate the points carefully drafted backstage by their campaign managers.
And in what other country is there such a range of political opinion? From Le Penn who keeps a consistently racist and so-far-right-that-left-cannot-even-be-seen-on-the-horizon rhetoric (one no longer knows whether to take seriously or just to forgive him due his old age) to my personal favourite Segolene Royal. Sorry, Segolene I don't have the accents on my keyboard!
While Segolene's feminine talk and soft approach (read: no approach) politics - I want to give everthing they deserve to my people! - may work with some at home, it just doesn't seem to pay off for the poor lady abroad. To prove her political maturity, Segolene has been increasing her appearances on the international political scene. I found particularly impactful her series of tea meeting with Chinese housewifes. Apparently, the number 10 of the Chinese cabinet was too busy to see her.
Apparently, local political incompetence refuses to stay local. Segolene's latest commentary is spreading outside her native France to Lebanon, China and now...Canada! Selon Segolene, Quebec should have the independence it deserves. At least this remark demonstrates the consistency of Ms. Royal's approach - neither does she understand the practical implications of her domestic propositions, nor does she seem to understand those of her foreign policy statements. And while on the foreign policy scene Canada is most definitely not a loud player, Ms. Royal's remarks have managed to rub even the Canadians the wrong way.
http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/elections-2007/0,,3383704,00-mot-royal-qui-herisse-canadiens-.html
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