Rolling in the Deep State

“We could’ve had it all if it weren’t for those pesky kids”

                                                                                              –Omar Suleiman

Los Tigres Del Boursa*

النمور من الشمال

We’re working on a hard-hitting piece with a Boursa angle but we thought we should share some observations and information about the old neighborhood, seeing as the original raison d’etre for this blog was to chronicle its happenings.

Left Behind

Who knew the US government had a sewing book?

“This was a campaign for social behavioral change,” he said. “I would ask people, ‘What do you do when you’re frustrated?’ And they would say, ‘I march.’ ”

His reply became almost standard, he said: “If the people who marched actually voted, we wouldn’t have to march in the first place.”

That’s an NYT article from a couple days ago, about Obama’s hopes to win Arizona by galvanizing the Latino vote next year. The situation for Latinos in Arizona and liberals and leftists in Egypt is quite different. But…

SCAF Wiedersehen

a milli a milli a milli

Huge numbers of people turned up in Tahrir last week, despite a noticeable lack of official enthusiasm from the Brotherhood leadership. The obvious lesson for the MB to draw is that there is a very large constituency that wishes to see SCAF out. That is why the Brotherhood is making loud noises, the first day after the first round of elections, about a civilian takeover of Egypt’s government immediately after the elections. SCAF, after all, could easily characterize the protestors in Tahrir as not representing Egypt (putting aside the casting of aspersions that they are not “Real Egyptians”) but it will be much harder for them to do so when confronted with a coalition of the MB and the denizens of Tahrir (ie the old revolutionary coalition).

Remember Rappin’ Gulf Capital?*

First, a dedication to our readers…

Slanted and Enchanted in Aden

Since we’re not really qualified to discuss Yemen in depth (not that that’s really stopping anyone), we’ve settled, at least for the time being, on outsourcing our coverage to indie rock (and perhaps other) musicians.

We’re slightly embarrassed to admit that in our youth we used to think this song was about Palestine and Israel, though we could never really figure out what daggers had to do with it, nor the whole north and south bit. It was only recently that we realized Pavement was in the business of propaganda for South Yemen. Were you so naïve as to think the announcement of Pavement’s reunion and the emergence of the Southern Movement was mere coincidence???

TBE Detained Again! Looks Forward To A Long Life Of Being Profiled At US Borders!

"Sittin here grillin people like George Foreman" -Kanye. Also TBE is considering making a film called "Must Love George Grosz," a "Must Love Dogs" for the LRB/NYRB personals set.

TBE has once again alighted (alit) in our ancestral homeland, just in time for a slew of prophet’s birthdays and new yearseses and things.  Which meant passing through JFK, which meant our first chance to see if entering the country on a fresh passport would allow us to bypass the security scrutiny that we so graciously countenanced last time we entered the homeland. (Is it just us or does that word sound better in German?)

Establishments: Egyptian, Literary and Hip Hop

TBE is more-or-less out of pocket due to a number of annoying intrusions on our regularly scheduled bloggingzeit, so we’ll probably be reduced to subsistence blogging during the next period.

“Is it a Crisis or a Boring Change?” : تي بي يي للترجمة

We’ve been a bit busy for the past few days, and not reading the newspapers as much as we’d prefer, so we’re not sure what exactly is going on in the Brotherhood. After the initial round of resignation articles, the Brotherhood pushed back on the story, saying that Akef had not resigned. The papers apparently don’t believe Akef. An article in yesterday’s al-Shorouk said that Muhammad Habib, Akef’s deputy, is leading a caretaker administration until elections scheduled for January, perhaps with Akef still the titular leader (this article puts resignation in quotes, we assume to denote ambiguity). But Akef himself still claims to be running things, and we trust him more than the many anonymous sources cluttering almost every story about the Brotherhood.

Today we translated highlights from an interview Akef gave to BBC Arabic yesterday, though we’ve had trouble finding the actual interview, so had to rely on the al-Youm al-Sabe’a account. It covers a lot of ground. If anyone has the link to the actual interview, please put it in comments or hit us on twitter.

Before the translation, a couple thoughts:

A Note from Mark Halperin

TBE used to be an avid reader of ABC News’ The Note, the DC media circle jerk formerly helmed by the incorrigible Mark Halperin. One of the things they harped on incessantly (circa 2004) was message discipline, and Republicans’ understanding of its value and Democrats non-adherence. The Brotherhood’s media operation (we assume it exists, against the evidence) is flailing. Though Akef’s round of interviews (on al-Jazeera and BBC Arabic and possibly elsewhere) may stem the tide of theorizing about what is going on inside the Brotherhood, we doubt it.

This is due in part to media culture in Egypt, where anonymous sourcing is even more common than in the US, and perhaps also to the fact of top-heavy organizations with too far too many “informed sources.” Call us conspiratorialists, but we don’t generally trust journalists (whether in Egypt or the US) to determine for us who is and isn’t an “informed source,” even as we understand the reasons why some of these sources prefer anonymity.

That said, Akef’s blaming the whole affair on the regime (see below) also rings hollow, because in order to do so all these journalists would have to be using fake Brotherhood sources provided to them by the government. While we wouldn’t put this past some unscrupulous scribes, there are clearly some who have good sources inside the Brotherhood and would not be fooled by some two-bit quote-hustlers.

Judges, Not Teachers?

The al-Shorouk article we mentioned above, headlined “Four Crises Hastened Akef’s Departure” is the first in which we’ve seen what has previously been referred to as the Brotherhood’s “conservative” wing as the “Qutbist” wing. Though it’s in quotes in the article, it’s still quite shocking, and either an instance of al-Shorouk editorializing or repeating a sentiment it hears from its sources, which we believe are overwhelmingly “reformist” or “liberal.” At any rate, it surprised us. Unfortunately the al-Shorouk website is currently down, so we can’t provide a link to the article.

From al-Youm al-Sabe’a online:

Akef: I Didn’t Resign, And Elections For The Next Guide To Be Held In The Next Two Months

Quick Links for October 15, 2009

Meet your new junior Senator from Oklahoma!

Dept. of Congressional Oversight:

We always love when articles on the Middle East bemoan the fact that societies here are infiltrated with conspiratorial thinking, as though the US was a paradise of rationality…

In our first story, the spawn of some rightwing cranks infiltrated the US Muslim advocacy organization CAIR, then wrote a book about it. The conclusion: CAIR runs a typical DC lobbying/PR operation. But of course that didn’t stop a group of public diplomacy-minded House Republicans from attempting to use the book to gear up a witch-hunt against Muslim hill staffers.

Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, is trying to cut off funding for political science, on grounds that fancy research is unnecessary when people can just watch CNN or Fox news (or even read blogs, if they really want to become experts on politics). Anonymous hill staffers told TBE that Coburn wants to divert funding to the hard sciences, specifically research into robotics. His vision, they said, is to create an robot that can be programmed with updatable Republican talking points and perhaps the complete works of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, rendering Republican legislators of Coburn’s ilk redundant, and saving hardworking US taxpayers from the burden of funding their salaries, copious staffs and government-funded healthcare.

Music:

BBC Xtra podcast on class and music in Egypt (Arabic).

An annotated Google map of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Posse on Broadway.”