visting a friend who is single-handedly and without the knowledge of
a few general thoughts.
1. Americans have massively underestimated the lingering power of middle eastern colonial history on how the American invasion of Iraq appears. The narrative in Egypt is one of throwing of colonial overloards and . to the extent that . this is not This is another thing people in America frequently forget: that in large parts of the world there is a unity between the people, the land, and history, all of which have evolved together and in place to create a nation. i think i also understood for the first time why people accuse zionists of olonialism. a different vision of beloning. the repetition of a phase in arab history people thought they were done with.
2. That said, I felt very ltitle direct anti-Americanism and in fact found just about everyone I met very friendly. The bombings in Dahab happened to occur while I was ther, though not in Dahb itself.
3. Egypt Air is about as comfortable and high-quality an airline as United these days. films focused on mexican americans in the us. Also: we have got to get some new entry videos., With all the money we’ve spent on the Department of Homeland Security, you’d think they could have come up with something better than the highly repetitious film clip showing non-citizens how to get properly photographed and fingerprinted to enter the US.
quality of life issues and political freedom. the air pollution in cairo is terrible. it actually hurts to drive through down-town cairo with the windows open. i am rode in the worst car i have ever been in, which i cam convinced was salvaged from an eastern european lake for parts, and then shipped to egypt, where it was pressed into use as a taxi. ive never been in a vehicle that bad before. fortunately, a the mixed scnet of jasmine and deisel.
a big local controversy right now in about dumping of inferior vegetable products and toxic pestisides.
Public diplomacy and egypt. i’ve been critical of Karen Hughes and our public diplomacy efforts. we could get much more bang for our buck if. here are tow of the best ideas i heard.
1. egypt museum, pyramids, and other egyptian antiquities. it’s like a museum of a museum. the famous gold chair is displayed in a glass case with no labelling at all. elsewhere, i visited an old roman catacomb in which the tour involved a great number of rickety wooden boards. basically, step lightly on the rickety wooden board over the open grave pit, now. basically, the pyramids are surrounded by the slums of Giza, a patch of desert carved out of antiquity as the bustling impoverished metropolis spread around it. crossing a 14-lane highway, neogtiating your way across on a lane by lane basis. (Leading to the local joke that “walking like an egyptian” means “close your eyes and prey to God.” It’s quioe fasincated because unlike the U.S., where the traffic flows are regulated visually by a system of lights, in Egypt people self-regulate traffic flows through an aural system of communication, namely, honking.
There is no reason for this. Cairo is a reasonably modern city with a Four Seasons that serves sushi and a giant sign for Gold’s Gym overlooking the Nile (not to mention innumerable Chili’s, which are somewhat inepeplicably enjoyed only by Egyptians). There are internet cafes around every corner with good quality DSL lines.
2. alexandria, historic home of the most famous library in the world, its a city of $5 million coptic, gateway to africa, to the arab world, but more relaxed than cairo. people hold hands. a public-private partnership between bill gates and the us governemtn to turn alexandria into the translation and techonlogy capital of the arab world. gigantic, and more well-to-do than Cairo. a sense of historical importance as an intellectual center. to the extent that memories of past glory , development that was in sync with that past glory. most connected with europe.
3. in exchange for such investments, which would improve tourism to egypt — which the nation loves because of the six-to-one exchaneg rate, us might have a bit more clout in pressing mubarak to allow greater political freedom. the problem with american aid dollars these days is that they are somewhat tainted, and so real democratic opposition
