Socialist events

The Center for Socialist Studies has announced its September schedule of events:

Tuesday, 12 September, 8pm to 10pm
How can we read the new constitutional amendments?
Judge Hisham Bastaweessi
Dr. Gamal Zahran, Member of Parliament
Sameh Naguib, researcher with the Center for Socialist Studies

Sunday, 17 September, 7pm to 9pm
In the aftermath of resistance in Lebanon, where is the Middle East heading to?
Dr. Mustafa el-Labbad, political analyst
Dr. Diaa Rashwan, senior researcher with Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies
Tamer Wageih, researcher with the Center for Socialist Studies

Thursday, 14 September, 7pm to 9pm
Short films based on Naguib Mahfouz’s stories
Hareb min el-‘Edam (fleeing from execution), Directed by Ibrahim el-Sahn, Starring Abdallah Gheith and Samiha Ayoub.
Essada (The Echo), Directed by Ashraf Fahmy, Starring Mahmoud Morsi and Zouzou NabilThe films will be followed by a discussion moderated by cinema critic Ahmad Abdel ‘Al

Thursday, 28 September, 9pm to 11pm
Beirut el-Gharbeya (Western Beirut), a Lebanese movie, Directed by Ziyad el-Doweiri

Digital Egypt

I’m currently uploading Gigabytes of miscellaneous photos (demos, funerals, conferences, street clashes, scenes from the aftermath of terror strikes in Sinai, etc…) I’ve been taking since 2004, so that they would be available for websurfers. It’ll take me few days to get it all done hopefully. Meanwhile, keep your eye on my flickr account.

Israeli soldiers in Taba

(Up on insistence of the Israeli government, Mubarak’s regime allowed Israeli soldiers into the Egyptian city of Taba, to contribute to the rescue efforts. Photo taken on 8 October, 2004)

Prayer, like language, is dangerous

First they went after the holy language, now they’re going for the chosen people:

Some fellow passengers are questioning why an Orthodox Jewish man was removed from an Air Canada Jazz flight in Montreal last week for praying.

The man was a passenger on a Sept. 1 flight from Montreal to New York City when the incident happened.

The airplane was heading toward the runway at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport when eyewitnesses said the Orthodox man began to pray.

“He was clearly a Hasidic Jew,” said Yves Faguy, a passenger seated nearby. “He had some sort of cover over his head. He was reading from a book.

“He wasn’t exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth,” Faguy added.

The action didn’t seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous.

“The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn’t a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave,” Faguy said.

Can you believe that? They kicked him off the plane even though he wasn’t a Muslim.

Back to school

School in Egypt starts these days, and the local papers are quoting a study conducted by the Ministry of Education that estimates annual spending on private lessons to have reached some LE13 billion. This does not even include private lessons for university students.

This turn-over makes the private lesson industry one of the largest sectors of the Egyptian economy, I guess. For comparison, the Egyptian construction industry is not much heavier. (It’s amazing how much money Egyptian households are able to mobilize given the official GPD per capita.)

Meanwhile, the government tries to attract private investments under public-private partnerships to build 50 new elementary and secondary schools. As part of his presidential campaign promises, Mubarak promised 3,500 new schools until 2011.

However, I’ve heard of newly built schools financed by international donors that 12 months after their inauguration are falling apart, as no funds and capacities exist for maintenance.

I’m wondering what over 700,000 civil servants working in the administration of Egypt’s educational system are actually doing. They are the true obstacle to reform in this sector.

She’s not going to be quiet

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Interested in Raed Jarrar’s adventure at JFK? You too can have your very own “I am a robber� (or whatever it says in that funny moon-man language) t-shirt.

In fact, “we will not be silent� apparently comes from a Goethe-quoting German resistance group who distributed pamphlets in 1942 and 1943. Not clear where or when they used the phrase (anyone?), but their first pamphlet supposedly closed with a phrase that remains relevant today: “every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure.�

Anyway, the shirts are available in Arabic, Farsi and Spanish–with an English subtitle–from an American Artists Against War group. Purchase is by donation to their campaign (though what this entails other than pissing off Jet Blue employees and JFK mukhabarat is unclear) on their website.

Google in the Middle East

As posted before, google has based its Middle East activities in Egypt, to the surprise of observers who expected the search engine would select Dubai.

I spoke to the regional manager of google, Sherif Iskander, a few days ago, and he told me that it was simply the size of Egypt that has attracted google here (time zones also were an issue).

Egypt has the region’s largest number of internet users as well as small and medium entreprises (and advertisers), the market segment that google’s business model is based upon. The booming tourism industry is a major client for google, and financial services which are underdeveloped in Egypt could become another major source of revenues soon.

But google can only sell its products if there’s content. Less then 1% of the internet’s content is in Arabic, although it is one of the world’s most spoken languages.

The research that Iskander referred to showed that 85% of the region’s internet users would in fact prefer content in Arabic. Google is thus working on creating more content. Until now, it has arabized its search function, its news portal and its email service. It also offers translation tools from English to Arabic and vice versa.

It also hopes to lower the significant cost barrier to local content, by offering advertising tools that automatically generate ads on local websites.

As access to the internet improves across the region – in Egypt ADSL prices came down recently – now it’s limited PC penetration and the lack of local content that is preventing the region from seeing higher numbers of internet users, it seems.