Egypt’s sexual harassment ‘cancer’

From BBC News - Link to full article

Sexual harassment of women in Egypt is on the increase and observing Islamic dress code is no deterrent, according to a survey published this week.

The Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR) describes the problem as a social cancer and calls on the government to introduce legislation to curb it.

The findings contradict the widely held belief in Egypt that unveiled women are more likely to suffer harassment than veiled ones.

Participants in the survey were shown pictures of women wearing different kinds of dress - from the mini skirt to the niqab (full face veil) and asked which were more likely to be harassed.

More than 60% - including female respondents - suggested the scantily clad woman was most at risk. But in reality the study concluded the majority of the victims of harassment were modestly dressed women wearing Islamic headscarves.

ECWR head Nihad Abu El-Qoumsan said that even veiled women who were victims of harassment blamed themselves.

Western women who took part in the study demonstrated a strong belief in their entitlement to personal safety and freedom of movement, she says, but this was totally absent among Egyptian respondents.

And a few statistics from the survey:

SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN EGYPT

Experienced by 98% of foreign women visitors

Experienced by 83% of Egyptian women

62% of Egyptian men admitted harassing women

53% of Egyptian men blame women for ‘bringing it on’

Source: Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights

And this should surprise, absolutely nobody. Every single Egyptian knows it, every single foreigner who has spent more than a few hours in transit through Cairo knows it. Been there. Been harassed. Got the T-shirt. The only thing that surprises me about this report is the last two statistics in this list above. 62% of men admitted it, yet 53% blame women for “bringing it on”. Now, pay attention, here comes the maths bit.

For the sake of simplicity let’s leave foreigners out of the equation. 83% of Egyptian females have been sexually harassed, yet only 62% of men admit to committing the offence, whilst 53% of men say “she started it”. Obviously, more than 62% of men commit this act, yet whilst the majority of them blame the woman for it (this argument fits into a category of academic argument known as “bullshit”) they are still unwilling to admit to have committed it themselves. Thus we can conclude that this group are either in denial to the point of actually seeing what they are doing as harassment (and so wouldn’t admit to it because they don’t think what they do counts), or they know they have done wrong, but both lie about it, and then turn the whole thing around by blaming the victim for it, had it occurred, which of course, it didn’t.

Moral crisis doesn’t even begin to describe it. Sexual harassment of one of several manifestations of serious, festering problems amongst Egyptian society.

Everyone, of course, wants to find the root of these problems in their own pet hate… Government, poverty, religion, unemployment, lack of a future, overpopulation, globalisation, dust storms, train delays, rage infected monkeys, whatever. It is, as always, a more complex issue. There is a whole combination of factors. Yes, years of malicious comments from the pulpits have played their part, but what is driving people to follow such preachers in the first place? What about the Coptic community? A simple one answer solution, pointing out a single evil merely appeals to a desire for sensationalism and “quick fix” solutions.

If there is one thing recent Egyptian history should teach us is that there are no simple answers, and quick fix solutions have a habit of creating new long term problems. Serious, long term study and considered, deliberate actions are what is desperately needed, not knee jerk reactions and rushed though, ill thought out responses.

God bless her, and all who sail in her…

So, the powers that be have finally given the green light to the Elizabeth class aircraft carrier. Two ships will now be built, as was originally wanted. The two ships, HMS Queen Elizabeth, and HMS Prince of Wales, will be built, at a total cost of £3.9 billion. They will be built in a joint venture by BAE Systems (”British Aerospace” as was) and VT Group (”Vosper Thorneycroft” as was). The ships will be, for a change, UK built. Portsmouth, Barrow in Furness, Govan and Rosyth  will be the sites used during construction, which it is hoped will employ about 10,000 people.

The ships will be based out of Portsmouth, home to the current Invincible class fleet, and each carrier will eventually have a full complement of 36 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, which are being jointly built and developed by the UK and US (BAE / Lockheed Martin / Northrop), though when the fleet goes into service in 2014, they will also be equipped to carry Harriers, as the JSF is unlikely to be fully ready by that time.

They nay sayers and peaceniks are unsurprisingly up in arms about the whole project. However, although I’m hardly itching to go an invade Iran, I think there are genuine reasons to be happy about this project.

Firstly, our existing fleet is old, and the ships are small. We have to be realistic and keep our military up to date, otherwise there is no point in having one at all. We need to be able to back up the people we put on the ground, and air support is a major part of that. We can’t just leave them out there with no back up at all.

Secondly, our shipyards are dying. Whilst I feel a big part of this has been due to the desertion of our shipbuilders by our own shipping companies, if the government can assist in protecting jobs not only by committing to necessary orders (preferably without delay, in future) then this helps, especially since these ships will not only be built in the UK, they will be based in Portsmouth, providing security socially for generations to come, as well as militarily (unless of course, we use them irresponsibly, which of course our government would never do! *cough*Iraq*cough* *cough*Afghanistan*cough* *cough*Falklands*cough*)

So yes, I think this is a welcome development, and I’m interested to see how the JSF project will develop now there is a guaranteed UK platform for it’s deployment, even if I am far from happy about the idea of us sharing a joint weapons platform with the US.  Portsmouth needs these ships, Barrow certainly needs them, and the Royal Navy need them even more.

Let us just hope that having been given such powerful ships, we may be wiser in the use of them than we have been in the past, and that the Ministry of Defence may live up to name, and use them to defend us, not attack those who are not our real enemies.

Finally! The “mystery” of the skulls is revealed…

The Ancient Egyptian skulls found last year in Manchester, that is, not some bad Indiana Jones reference…

This little beam of light came to shine upon this frankly rather bizarre episode in the Egyptian Daily News, as a mere afterthought to a rather more high profile repatriation of a stela recovered from a London auction house (more on that to come on Pavements of Silver)

Link to original article

…The archaeologists also retrieved from London two human skulls dating back to Egypt’s Greek-Roman era, the Council statement said.

The remains were believed to have been taken by a British doctor during a visit to Egypt in 1988, it said. The man buried the skulls in his front garden in Manchester after his wife refused to allow him to bring them to a new house they bought earlier this year, the statement said.

The garden’s new owner found the skulls and informed police, who had them examined by Oxford University archaeologists. They were discovered to be more than 2,000 years old, and were subsequently handed over to the Egyptian Embassy in London, the statement added.

It doesn’t seem they were buried for religious reasons (contrary to my first assumption of something quite this weird) but exactly why he chose this way to “dispose” of them isn’t entirely clear. Nor quite why he may have taken them in the first place. This answers a few questions, but the whole situation is still decidedly strange.

No doubt that rumors of a curse will crop up soon enough.

Ryugyong Is Back - Thanks to… Orascom?

It is probably one of the most ambitious buildings of the 20th century. Over 1,000 feet high, with 105 floors and no less than 7 revolving restaurants.  A gigantic triangular tower of frankly bizarre proportions that utterly dominates the city.  The Ryugyong hotel was put Pyongyang (and North Korea) on the map. In fact, the North Koreans put the Ryugyong on the map before a spade was even put in the ground. Work started in 1987, and initial progress was impressive. When work was halted in 1992, as the collapse of the Soviet Union threw North Korea into chaos, the concrete superstructure of the building was completed. Despite this, the vast tower has sat as a silent, dark shadow, the only colour being the construction crane that continued to sit atop it’s main pinnacle.

Much talk circulated about finding foreign investors to finish the work (the original budget for the structure consumed 2% of the entire North Korean GDP) but (unsurprisingly, given the political climate) no one came forward with the estimated US$300 million required for the work. Rumors even circulated tha the building had a fatal design flaw (including reports that the elevator shafts were not straight) but no evidence or reliable reports ever confirmed it. And now, an Egyptian firm has stepped up to the task.

But, this year, construction work finally recommenced (after a 16 year hiatus) with investment from Orascom.. Yes, Orascom as in the phone company, but they do far more, having been involved in construction and technology in a big way for some years now, particularly on the Red Sea.

It’s not actually as bizarre as one may at first assume. This is not Orascom’s first foray into the surreal world of the DPRK. They have also been heavily involved in the rapid spread of mobile phones in North Korea. There are now believed to be more than 20,000 mobile phone users in Pyongyang alone. It is also perhaps telling that prior to the plans for the Ryugyong becoming known, Orascom also invested US$115m in purchasing a 50% stake in a cement factory near Pyongyang (the Sangwon Cement Factory), and extensively upgraded and modernised it’s facilities.

So, we wait with baited breath. Can the Ryugyong be brought back into the limelight, and achieve the fame it was originally intended to? Is this, along with the nuclear cooling off, a prelude to some form of opening up?

Numerous overtures have been made to foreign businesses and tourism in recent years, including a small resort operated by the South Korean conglomerate, Hyundai, in a North Korean beauty area for foreign visitors. Industrial parks have also been set up near the DMZ, for South Korean businesses to pour money into N.K. and reap the benefits of a very cheap but well educated workforce. The Ryugyong, however, is in a different league entirely, both in terms of ambitions, the sums involved, and the fact it sits smack in the centre of Pyongyang itself… The cult centre and impregnable fortress of the Dear Leader. Interesting times we live in…

Appreciating the McCulture

And so it was that a few months ago I gazed out of a massive floor to ceiling window, across to what one may describe as the perfect view. Across an open plaza, dotted with palms, to the Sun Court of Amunhotep III. How heart wrenchingly beautiful, how incredibly humbling, how awe-inspiring, how grateful it makes one feel to be alive, to appreciate such perfect homes and symbols of the divine.

And where better to contemplate such emotions and see such perfect expressions of humankind at it’s finest than…. McDonald’s.

Indeed, whilst one can quite happily contemplate the nature of the gods, the highest aspirations of man, and the immortality of memory, all whilst chewing thoughtfully on a McChicken Sandwich (easy on the lettuce, large coke, and can I get some extra sauce, sorry, ketchup, please?) and looking out at the temple, it doesn’t quite work the same the other way.

When standing in the Sun Court one evening, just as the lights come on, ones thoughts are not drawn so much to the beauty of the carving, or protective sense of the forest of columns that surround you. Nor is your mind turned to the heavens, and gods above, or to the memory of the builders of the Mansion of Amun. Instead ones mind turns to gold, the ultimate symbol of all civilization. Not gold as in the metal (Au), but true gold. The golden arches. Because, glaring in ones view like a pimple on your friends forehead in the midst of conversation, it cannot be ignored, so great is it’s lurid contrast to the far greater thing that it dominates, yetfeeds off.

McCulture:-
fast-food culture, i.e. lack of culture, in reference to McDonald’s. Fatty, uninteresting, nutritionally void & resembling cardboard in depth and flavor.
(Urban Dictionary)

Contrary to what one may think. I do not wish that McDoanld’s disappear entirely, for everyone needs a job, no matter how much I feel for those who must undertake such unrewarding labour. I do however wish that they (or indeed, anyone) would not have the front of their shop spewing out red and yellow vomit into the grounds of the local temple.

And whilst I may not necessarily wish that McDonald’s disappear off the face of this earth entirely, I do wish that McCulture would do just that.

A scribe’s lament…

These last few days have found me in a state of flux. As regular readers and those who know me well will know, this year I hope to attend university. Today is the open day where I get to meet the lecturers and discuss the course and my application, so I am looking forward to it, and am quite excited.

I also intended to take a secondary course before the start of the academic year, to study Egyptian language at the intermediate level. I already have the basic level (both from previous study at the same institution, and also from independent study) but have been looking forward to being able to improve my understanding of the language, so that I may begin to study more complex texts in the original language, and to give myself a strong foundation for the start of my main course. Some additional modules of the main course, and my subsequent education, will give me a more advanced understanding of the language, so future summers will be dedicated to trying to obtain some experience in archaeological fieldwork and building up my understanding of Arabic.

This is a plan which I feel to be solid, and generally “good”. Only the institution at which I was going to pursue the intermediate level, won’t be offering this course this year. No other institution in London offers a directly comparable course. These courses areexcellent, as they are short but very intensive full time courses, that could be squeezed in before the academic year. The intensity and focus inspires you to put in the time and effort, and it was possible to pick up a lot in a relatively show time and to gain the interest and momentum to allow you to progress further. In addition the courses were well taught, with good lecturers.

The alternative course is at a different institution in a different part of the city, over at Angel, which is not “my” part of town. The course is taught part-time and is held over one academic year, so it will be possible to run it alongside my main course, but means I will fail to get the “head start” I was hoping for. It is also a “basic/intermediate” course meaning that although it leaves you with an intermediate level knowledge of the language, it starts right back at the beginning, covering aspects of the that I am already familiar with. I fear this could be very demoralising.

I know how busy academic schedules can be for lecturers. I also know the resources are extremely limited. I do not want to be angry at those who take the time and effort to teach me. I have every respect for them, and I am eternally grateful to them for helping me fulfill my potential. But I feel that both their and my efforts are being wasted by not following through the programme to it’s next step.

Perfecting The Imperfect

As those who know me well will probably realise, I have quite a strong ethical and moral compass, and a very acute set of personal ideals, a trait that is quite typical of those that psychologists like to describe as having an “INFP” nature.

This means that as well as being quite ethically or ideologically driven, I put great value on standing by those ideals in day to day life. I also dislike hypocrisy, a point which I feel I should clarify, as there is a gaping chasm between contradiction and hypocrisy. Life is full of contradictions, bees that can fly being only one of them. Hypocrisy, however, is another issue entirely.

Of course, the world is far from perfect, and so are we, as human beings. So how does one survive in the world, day to day, and manage to keep their ethical compass undamaged? And how, in so doing, do we avoid becoming hypocrites ourselves?

I hold that striving to ensure a harmonious, mutually and genuinely respectful, and honest relationship within any group to be one of the things I value most. A environment where we are aware that other people exist as well as ourselves, and like us, have thoughts, needs and ideals of their own. I put this above more material aims. And, yes, I do believe that you can have honesty with those things, because once those things are present, openness and a considerate honesty becomes possible, perhaps even inevitable once we start to consider others.

The workplace is where we spend the majority of our waking lives, and so I believe that it is important here as much as anywhere for one hold true to their ethical compass. However it is here that I find we most often are forced to compromise them. How can one create any harmony within a group that turns on it’s own workers the minute they head out of the door, poring scorn on them? How can one aim to create harmony between the group, when being honest to one about what scorn is being poured upon their head will tear them apart even more. How can one be honest when doing so tears the group apart? How can one respect any of their co-workers, having seen them behave in a manner that makes children fighting over crayons seem mature and diplomatic? How can one respect the wishes of those above when the person in question stamps his feet and waves his arms when presented with a technical issue, as if he were the living embodiment of a cartoon? When he refuses to hear the honest truth told with pure intentions?

How does one stay true to their ethics and seek to perfect themselves in such an imperfect world? How does one not become a hypocrite, speaking of ethics, that in the largest part of day to day life – the office - remain nothing more than writing on the wall and lip service?

All ideas are welcome…

A KHAWAGA’S TALE: The Doughnut effect

By Peter A. Carrigan
4th May 2008

Downtown Cairo is set to see a sizeable increase in the doughnut effect in 2009 as three notable institutions are allegedly closing their doors for renovation or deserting the Central Business District for the city’s outskirts.

The doughnut effect ripped the heart out of many of the smaller American cities in the 1970s when government services and business fled the urban center for the outer-suburbs to cater to the burgeoning upper-middle classes, leaving a ‘hole’ in the city’s center.

The other doughnut effect or the love handle explosion was to follow as the suburbs also filled with fast food outlets while God’s chosen people settled into a sedentary lifestyle.

From the Daily News Egypt - Link to full article

Cairo. My loveable ugly puppy dog… How I love you for all your far too numerous faults, and the endless migraine inducing problems you have given me. Don’t go…. Except Mugama, moving that is fine with me. Somewhere a long way away would be nice… Siwa, perhaps.

Cairo centre has it’s fair share of problems, indeed, far more than it’s fair share. The air is filthy, the roads crowded, many areas run down. And if people desert it, these will be exacerbated. Cairo is the heart of modern Egypt. What does it say when the people turn around and, in effect, give up on it?

From Xeper - The Blind Lady

From Xeper, the blog of a dear friend. Link to the full post

She goes into a room where she was raped
But she doesn’t see it this way
The dear blind Lady
She thinks he was her husband
And she wishes for kids

She goes into a room where people are jealous
All around her
Their grand father was her grandson
Their father has raped her
Yet they respected her
Then they were jealous
And with her empty eye sockets
She thought this was love

She went into a room where now her so-called own children
Were stripping her naked to sell her clothes
They looked for people around the world
With any money
To fuck her
To fuck her daughters
To fuck her sons handcuffed
To cut and sell her very flesh
Wholesale, to any who would buy
From bloody hands of her so-called children

Bastard children!
Children of rape
By a man who, in her blindness,
She thought her husband.

Take the trouble to read the full piece. The cry should be heard by all. We like to pretend that we do not hear it, because we don’t want to believe that this is so.

Perhaps we, like her, are blind. Perhaps because we turned our eyes away in shame, and refused to see a wad of money thrust into willing hands. Or perhaps, we too, see only love in place of jealousy and greed.

Perhaps we choose to believe the shameful acts of hankering after her clothes, her flesh, not as being willing to steal from a helpless lady to adorn oneself in her finery and fetish over her body, but as the respect she believes she has and rightfully deserves. If that is so, we are truly pitiful.

London Elects…. Krusty the Klown…

London went to the polls on May 1st. To be true, a large part of the country did so, in their local elections. However, London is a different case. The local government of London is not like other local authorities. It is the London Assembly, a regional government with significant sway over local affairs. The Assembly is headed by the Mayor.

The Mayor of London is the second most powerful politician in Europe (second only the to the President of Portugal) in terms of his direct personal authority. The London Assembly does not vote, it only advises. The Mayor himself decides what happens. He can be a one man planning committee for urban regeneration (such as One Hyde Park Corner), a one man transport committee for deciding massive projects like London Overground. Therefore, as you can imagine, who gets elected Mayor is quite a big deal in London, especially since he is the only directly elected mayor in the country. In the UK it is normal for the electorate only to choose body members (i.e. members of parliament, local councils etc, who in turn elect the PM, Mayor etc). Plus, normal mayors do not have absolute authority, they merely chair the council, who vote on decisions.

So, a big day for the city. And who better to control the vast development projects, multi-billion pound budgets, sprawling infrastructure and millions of inhabitants of the national capital, than a failed journalist and self-styled buffoon? Meet your new ruler, Boris “Ban Bendy Buses” Johnson.

In years to come, people will write about this day, and wonder exactly what London was thinking when they elected this inexperienced man with no clear agenda to rule them. All they will be able to write, based on what has been said these last few days, is that “they thought he was kinda funny” and that “it was time for something different”. I shall remind my dear readers of this when we are wading knee deep through trash on the way to work past the unfinished Overground system and Olympic Stadium (“Open in the time for the closing ceremony!”) Yes, Boris Johnson is “a change”.

Our last mayor had a clear vision and many years experience. His plans for London, particularly it’s transit and social housing have been widely seen in a positive light, as has his efforts in introducing better water and air quality and overhauling the rubbish collection and disposal systems. Because the electorate felt the other guy was “kinda funny”, all of this is now in jeopardy.

The people cry out about democracy and “being consulted”, and when they are given precisely this chance, this treat it as if they were going to the circus to see Krusty the Klown.

And now we all will reap the joyful harvest of the voting public’s infinite wisdom.