reports about travel out of Egypt

By all accounts, the Cairo Airport is utterly packed today, presumably by the first wave of people going abroad in anticipation of an overly… interesting June 30 coming up. On Twitter I saw someone refer to something like a 200 Euro price for Cairo-Berlin on June 30, but a 687 Euro price for the same flight if you try to take it on June 29.

There is more anger today about long lines at gas stations, and plenty of conspiracy theories about the government causing deliberate shortages to curtail protestors (though as mentioned yesterday, if this is true then it seems supremely foolish as a way of placating the populace).

Some facts to consider:

1. Morsi was elected on June 30 last year. I was willing to give him a chance, especially given that the other candidate in last year’s unfortunate runoff was Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak’s Prime Minister during the latter portion of the Revolution itself. I saw no reason to reward Shafik, though I can understand why some groups (Coptic Christians in particular) would view the Brotherhood as such an existential threat that they might see Shafik as a more palatable alternative. If I’d had a vote last year and you’d held a gun to my head, I probably would have held my nose and voted for Morsi (but would not have been able to sleep soundly that night).

2. During his almost one year in power, Morsi has done a mostly miserable job as President. I was one of those who thought “the Brotherhood is a dubious group that finds it alarmingly easy to tell lies, but at least they have a good track record of managing charity and public relief operations [such as after the 1992 earthquake, when many said they did a better job in meeting people’s needs than the Mubarak government itself].” I now see them as completely incompetent in an administrative sense. They have not been able to evolve quickly enough from a persecuted religious clique into a party of responsible governance.Egypt is a mess right now in terms of daily life, and Morsi must accept responsibility for that.

3. In my eyes, Morsi lost all his legitimacy anyway following his dictatorial self-aggrandizement last November, which included allowing paramilitary Brotherhood thugs to assault and even interrogate captured protestors at the palace.

4. Where does the country go from here? My taxi driver last night actually wanted Mubarak put back in power. This is being said to an increasing degree, but I think it’s utter nonsense both de facto and de jure. Others want Shafik, but not only would this still be very bad, it’s not even clear how it could be done short of a coup that installed him, which would make him more illegitimate a choice than ever.

5. A military coup is an absurd option, though not a 100% impossible one. And under some circumstances, such as open civil war in the streets, it could even be the unavoidable option. But the consequences would be horrible and would set Egypt back by years if not decades.

6. I still think the best option is to play this out democratically, either forcing Morsi out by petition (I don’t fully understand all aspects of the legalities of this) or simply making the voices of opposition clearer than ever on June 30 and looking ahead to the next round of elections.

But the polarization of opinion right now is fairly grim. Many people not only want Morsi out of power on June 30, but are sure that it will happen. Many other people view him as the legitimately elected President, and there are even threats from fringe groups such as Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, which is not only “considered a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union” (which is also true in other, very debatable cases) but is an actual terrorist group with blood not just on its hands, but covering its entire body. I never understood why the general post-Revolution spirit of forgiveness towards previously outlawed groups was extended to this menacing band of killers. If they do take it upon themselves to defend Morsi’s legitimacy with violence, then that’s the most logical path towards the Army becoming involved, and in that case one would have to root for the Army, like it or not (and I wouldn’t like it at all).

At the same time, I don’t imagine Islamist rule going quietly in Egypt. Under the scenario of an Army takeover, I think you’d see years of terrorist activity in the country if not open street combat. To risk an “Orientalist” metaphor, I don’t see that genie going back in the bottle.

If public opinion is to be believed, then there are a great many people alive in Egypt right now who will not be alive one week from now. Let’s hope the water bubbles instead of boiling.

Richard Dawkins with the weirdest video I’ve seen in years

You have to sit patiently through the first 5:00. Then all hell breaks loose.

new article in Science Progress

I’ve just had the following article appear: “An Outline of Object-Oriented Philosophy,” Science Progress, 96 (2), (2013), pp. 187-199.

It’s not available free online, so you’ll need to get it through your library if you want to see it.

European Graduate School

I’ll be teaching this summer for the first time at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. The dates will be August 19-22 (not August 17-19 as some of you may have heard previously).

the situation in Cairo

Or at least what I saw of it while travelling tonight from the airport to Zamalek… Some of the most chaotic traffic jams I’ve ever seen here, and that’s saying something.

The reason is interesting– very long lines at gas stations, so long (3 hours or more of waiting time) that even the fastest-moving streets are choked with them. We had our windows own in the warm weather, and I don’t remember hearing so much shouting and swearing.

My driver blamed it all on Moris, and was furious about the situation. That’s just an anecdote about one driver, but I’ve heard the same blame pinned on the President from others recently.

June 30 (the first anniversary of Morsi’s election) is a day set for mass protests in Egypt. The American University will be closed that day; it’s a Sunday, yes, but that’s a work day in Egypt where Friday/Saturday is the weekend.

The protestors claim to have more than enough signatures on petitions to force Morsi out. Let’s see what happens. There will be counter-demonstrations by the Brotherhood as well, and I can’t guess what will happen, except that some violence may enter the picture.

[ADDENDUM: An Egyptian friend on Facebook just echoed what my driver said, which is that the gas shortages are a deliberate and artificial measure by the government to hinder the upcoming demonstrations. Maybe. But if so, it seems like a flawed strategy. If people are angry over the incompetence of the current government –and I think they have reason to be– then why offer them additional proof of their accusation in a way that makes daily life miserable? It seems to me that it will just make people even angrier and increase the growing neo-revolutionary mood. My driver was actually hoping aloud that Mubarak will return to power, for crying out loud.]

first blog post from EgyptAir

I’ve never seen in-flight internet access on EgyptAir flights before, so this is a very nice development. The service seems reliable so far, and comes at a reasonable price.

We are following the typical London-Cairo route, going down the Adriatic coast of Croatia.over northern Greece (Mt. Olympus is generally visible on clear days) and then over whatever Greek islands we happen to be routed over for the final approach. Whenever we go over Santorini on a clear day, its lizard-like outline is unmistakable.

The nice thing about flying to Egypt from Europe is that you almost always come from the north, meaning that it’s quite clear when you’ve entered Egypt. The Mediterranean ends and the Nile Delta is suddenly beneath you. By then, the plane is already below full elevation and there’s only half an hour or so until you land in Cairo.

Quite often the plane will pass over Zamalek, and along with numerous obvious landmarks, I can frequently pick out my own home.

We just passed Split and are coming up on Dubrovnik. Too cloudy to see anything here, though.

Meillassoux interview in Paletten

I’ve just received a PDF of the full issue of Paletten, #291/292 (2013), which contains my article on Heidegger, McLuhan and Greenberg. Among other interesting pieces in this issue, there is a nice interview of Quentin Meillassoux by the Paris-based curator Sinziana Ravini, whom I just met yesterday at the Palais de Tokyo.

I don’t believe there’s a free copy of the issue online, but it’s the issue depicted HERE for anyone who might be interested.

put your superego at ease in hotels

I’m in my final UK hotel on this trip out of about 5. Every last one of them featured one of those guilt-inducing signs about towels in the bathroom. You know the ones I mean: “Think of how much the environment is destroyed every time we need to wash a towel. But the choice is still yours: we will give you a new towel if you want one.”

Normally I am easily sucked into guilt about environmental degradation, but hotel towels are the one exception. The reason is that I know someone who worked high up in the hotel industry who told me that this stratagem is a running joke in the industry, that they all smirk, chuckle and congratulate themselves about how they’ve hoodwinked the public with environmental guilt into saving laundry costs for the hotel, and so forth.

So, please turn off your superego whenever you see those signs in hotels. Don’t get me wrong– I think it’s actually good to reduce laundry by reusing the towels. But please don’t do so with any trace of obedience to the laughable pseudo-moral judgment of these money-grubbing hotel chains.

And once in awhile, if the hotel is particularly annoying, I just throw the towel on the floor every day.

more from Brian Leiter

HERE.

The Architecture Exchange

Excellent discussion tonight, and a nice home-cooked meal afterwards. Can’t comment more now, because we have an early day trip tomorrow.