Provocateur au chocolat

For a conservative Muslim nation, ice cream advertisements present a comical and contradictory commercial sentiment. Every American or European manufacturer possesses their own cast of models striking risque poses with accompanying text transgressing PG-13.

Today our lecture was provided by a member of the Shura council within the Egyptian Congress, by the name of Muhammed Mustafa Kamel, a modern and brazen, Johns Hopkins educated, veritable pariah in Egyptian politics. What I found most interesting were the invisible barriers of personal opinion and perspective predetermined by a government who could easily have him impeached in the blink of an eye, as they have done with so many others. He was however oddly emphatic in stating Mubarek is at the core of all foreign policy, with side-tasks delegated to his closed associates.

Other interesting points included his belief in Egypt's role as the leader of the Arab world, due to its unparalleled homogeny (basically Sunni, sole nation-state status), the fact Egypt is a player in the Arab world, the Muslim world, the Mediterranean community and EU with whom a free trade settlement will be attained by 2010. Additionally, a fact which had become ridden with dust in the back of my brain, was project "Bright Star." Bright Star is a war game held every two years somewhere in Western Egypt in which US troops hold an intensive military training venture, one which many have stated was the seminal force in "success" in the Iraq wars. And, the US provides Egypt with 1.2 billion USD in military aid alone each year, and yet nobody is certain of Egypt's WMD capabilities because Egypt refuses to disclose them until Israel signs the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. When you give your kid lunch money, you have to make sure it isn't going toward candy bars, clear? The US has however struck an intriguing deal with Egypt along the lines of the "Qualified Industrial Zone Agreement" in which any joint Egyptian and Israeli project or manufacture with an Israeli involvement of over 12% (I'd love to know how that number was widdled out) is exempt from taxes or tariffs in the States and other agreed upon nations. And lastly, during our Q&A session, a few people were eager to pummel him with interrogating inquiries into the upcoming election, asking if Mubarek would receive a dictator's vote in the high 90's...Kamel reiterated these would be fair and democratic elections, but any new candidate would be hard-pressed to beat the incumbent, as his experience trumps all corruption.

And another point of interest--it appears all of the Mubarek murals and signs around Tahrir Square have been removed. The once omnipresent image was replaced with different ads before Condi came to town, and the remaining have since been yanked.