Under the Umbrella

The images of protesters claiming the public streets and fending off tear gas in the so-called “Umbrella Revolution” in Hong Kong invites comparison to the Arab Spring and the crowds of young Egyptians that filled Tahrir Square in the winter of 2011.  The crowds are expected to balloon over the next hours as workers have the day off for the Chinese National Day and protesters are bracing for an impending government crackdown in response.  The sight of these hoards of young people with their home-made gas masks, and charging stations, and trash collection is so familiar, as are the riot police poised to crush another infant revolt, that we might take a moment to look back today and review how Egypt’s fledgling democracy has fared since that night on February 11, 2011, when the news blazed through the square that the president of 30 years had fled the city.

When I first moved to Egypt on September 4, 2009, all anybody wanted to talk to me about when they found out I was American was Obama.  Usually, they would just shout the name at me and give a thumbs up or maybe follow up with “good” in English or Arabic.  If there was one thing I knew for sure about Cairenes in my first weeks there is that they were bigtime Obama fans.  I had arrived on the heels of the president’s big “A New Beginning” speech to the Muslim World four months earlier, on June 4, 2014.  It still resonated with average Egyptians that the president of the United States had come to them, to their city, to try to mend some of the damage done to American-Muslim relations during the Bush presidency.  

One of the topics of President Obama’s speech that summer was democracy.  He said:

America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.

As if predicting the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood and the rise again of military rule in Egypt, President Obama went on to say:

There is no straight line to realize this promise. But this much is clear: governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments – provided they govern with respect for all their people.

This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.

All of the iterations of government since the 2011 revolution have been hostile to human rights activism, to freedom of speech, and to criticism.  Since that brief moment of exaltation in the square on the night of 2/11/11, Egypt has been trending away from democracy.  The Muslim Brotherhood, to be sure, failed to live up to the vision of an Arab democracy President Obama sketched out in his speech.  They were a New Beginning, but in many ways, they were the same old, same old government Egyptian human rights defenders and religious minorities have always known.  The MB government was noninclusive, dictatorial, discriminatory, undemocratic.  But they were elected to power.  One could argue, and I have, that the June 30^th “Tamarod” protests that led to President Morsi’s removal from power were not necessarily a coup. 

When 14 million people take to the streets to demand a change in government, you have a popular uprising, not a coup.  When secular academics, minority religious authorities, and military generals agree to safeguard power on behalf of the people until elections can be held, it is not a coup (yet).  When the military generals then trample on every other voice and seize control and the academics and religious minorities sound the warning bells, at that point, okay, probably a coup.  When the reigning military general who swore he had no interest in the presidency resigns his military role so he can “run” for president and elections are held in such a way that no other political parties have the time or funding to build a competing structure and the general becomes the president…ahem…coup.  That said, the ability to dupe a huge percentage of a population exhausted by change and a crashing economy into voting for a candidate that promises security for the racial/religious majority is not necessarily the antithesis of free elections.  It was Mitt Romney’s strategy and will likely be the Republican strategy in 2016 as well. 

If the al Sisi government had gone on to build a stern, overbearing, paternalistic, but relatively benign stumbling democracy (that later handed off power to the next elected president) perhaps we could have looked back on the military seizure of power in July 2013 as a second revolution. Instead, the current regime seems to have taken the examples of those that came before as an instruction manual for suppression and anti-democratic rule.

Since the opposition of the present regime includes not only the deposed Muslim Brotherhood, but also human rights activists and anyone attempting to shed a light on the current rulers’ abuses of power, the al-Sisi government has had to act quickly to crush dissent on all fronts.  In the fashion of the Mubarak justice system, lengthy prison sentences are regularly handed out to political opponents for relatively minor crimes.  For example, five MB members were recently sentenced to 15 years in prison for allegedly breaking the curfew last fall.  Egyptian courts have also been tossing death sentences out to the crowds like beads at a Mardi Gras parade, sentencing 545 defendants to death in April for the killing of a single police officer, and sentencing 643 defendants, including MB Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, to death in May for the killing of another police officer.

In addition to MB members, and those the government alleges are allied with the MB (more on that in a minute), hundreds of human rights defenders and journalists have also been jailed, beaten, and disappeared.  The leaders of the April 6^th Youth Movement, well-known as the social media organizers of the 2011 revolution are on hunger strike to protest their imprisonment and the detention of other activists.  Three Al Jazeera journalists, Mohamed Fahmy, Peter Greste and Baher Mohamed have been in jail 277 days according to the site the news outlet dedicates to their detention.  The three men were sentenced to seven years for allegedly “spreading false news” and “aiding or joining the banned Muslim Brotherhood.”  Baher Mohamed was sentenced to an additional three years for having a used bullet casing on him when he was arrested. 

Aside from “real” journalists who are actually working in the field to bring interviews and photographic evidence of human rights violations to light, the government is even persecuting fake journalists now.  Multiple complaints have been filed against Bassam Youssef, “the Egyptian Jon Stewart,” a cardiac surgeon turned Internet celebrity turned TV satirist who has appeared on The Daily Show a number of times, for allegedly saying insulting things about the president to a third party in a Cairo Airport lounge.  Youssef’s satirical show, Al Bernameg, had been banned during the presidential election and he decided not to continue it for safety reasons.

The al Sisi government is even taking a few plays out of the American playbook, as revealed by Edward Snowden.  They seem to have looked to the massive NSA internet warrantless spying apparatus and thought “hey, we can do that!”  Internet surveillance and censorship is nothing new in Egypt.  I complained ad nauseam about the Great Internet Blackout of the 2011 revolution and it was pretty well known at the time that expat bloggers would be questioned at the airport and maybe taken out of their homes for interviews at police stations.  One participated in expat list serves and Facebook pages with the knowledge that there were likely secret police among your number reporting back to the State on what you said online, just like those guys in the grandpa sweaters hanging out in your street were reporting on your comings and goings from your building.  But this plan to take tenders to build a spy system on this scale would be new, and if Egypt’s record on content censorship so far is terrifying, I can’t imagine how they would wield such comprehensive power to monitor and intervene in online activity.  With the help of what is ironically reported to be the affiliate of an American tech company, Egypt is essentially turning itself into China.

Which brings us back to Hong Kong and the Umbrella Revolution.  We are poised on the precipice of another popular uprising (fueled by youth and social media) in another area of the world where revolutions are few and far between and government crackdowns are quick and ruthless and thorough.  Whereas in 2009, US foreign policy was aimed at reaching out to repair our image in the Middle East, we have just come off the President’s Asia Tour this spring, his fifth trip there during his time in office, aimed at cementing our relationships in the region.  Just as in 2009, shortly after shaking hands, making speeches, and making promises, these relationships stand to be tested.

We need to take a look at our own responsibility for the petering out of the promise of Tahrir and ask ourselves if we have done enough to urge Egypt's leaders along the path toward democracy.  Now one might stop here to demand why the birth of democracy anywhere, much less in Egypt or Hong Kong, is our responsibility at all.  I would say if we are going to take responsibility for combating global terrorism, to the extent that we are willing to engage in some form of warlike activities simultaneously in at least Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen (alphabetically), we should show the same commitment to putting our muscle (and our money and our manpower) behind our peaceful principles as well. 

And yet, we don’t, at least, we haven’t, when it comes to Egypt.  Our core principles have taken a back seat to…well, I’d say “pragmatism” if Egypt were actually practically effective in preventing violence between Israel and Hamas, but since the violence occurs regardless, I will say “politics.”  When the military seized power in July 2013, and secular leaders like Mohamed ElBaradei and Coptic leaders began to withdraw their support for those who had taken charge of the government, it became clear that what began as arguably a popular uprising had become a coup. Amid high rhetoric, the United States ostensibly, very publicly, put a hold on sending aid to Egypt (which means funding to Egypt's military) until after democratic elections could be held.  However, this hold was not the pro-democratic statement it appeared to be.  Since the July 2013 coup occurred after the aid funds for that year had been dispensed in May and the US unlocked the 2014 funds two weeks after General al Sisi won the presidential elections held the following May, Egypt's military never actually suffered any loss of American funds as a sanction for overthrowing the elected government. 

Sure, there are practical reasons for this.  Egypt was integral in the peace talks between Israel and Gaza during the conflict this summer and it is for this role, as a stabilizer in the region, that the US government prefers to overlook Egypt's human rights record and maintain the status quo.  There are plenty of practical reasons for the US to overlook what China will do next, not the least of which is that we have nowhere near the influence over China that we have over Egypt, a country whose military (and by extension government) we pay for.  But as we owed it, and yet still owe it to Egypt’s human rights defenders to bring what influence we do have to bear on their behalf, so do we owe it to those young protesters being pepper sprayed in the streets of Hong Kong to fight for their rights to step out from under their umbrellas and stand safely in the sun (and vote for the candidates they choose!)

Certainly, the US lacks moral authority as a model of transparent and free democracy these days.  Edward Snowden pulled back the curtain on that particular Great and Powerful Oz.  We cannot seriously clutch our chests in horror that Egypt wants to build a mass internet surveillance system or hands out extreme sentences to its young internet activists while Mr. Snowden remains under threat potential sentences of up to thirty years in prison.  We cannot reasonably gasp and moan about a lack of accountability for the mistreatment of human rights defenders in Egypt when prosecutors in Ferguson are leaving the grand jury to its own devices rather than doing their job and playing a role in recommending appropriate charges, and when police in Ferguson are covering their name badges as they engage with protesters. 


But neither can our leaders parade around Cairo, as President Obama did in 2009 and Hillary Clinton did in 2011, paying lip service to democratic ideals, and yet continue to fund a government that jails young human rights leaders and journalists, monitors social media organizing (and jails Facebook page administrators), brings lawsuits against comedians for off-hand comments made in airport lounges, and generally casts itself in the image of the very autocracy the revolution strove to overthrow.  If we are going to condescend to Egypt as our little brother in democracy, we cannot keep giving him cookies even as he smashes every dish in the kitchen.  Our little brother needs a spanking.  Surely, we could use a bit of a time-out ourselves.

Why Dissing Olive Garden is Class Warfare (or just plain urban snobbery)

First, a quick thanks to my friend Serene for getting me started on this rant in Facebook comments.  If you are at all interested in how feminist philosophers view the world, check out her blog, The Second Shift, and particularly the post about the reality TV show Married at First Sight, here.

And now, on to the rant!

A 294 page slideshow by hedge fund Starboard Value LP slamming Olive Garden has been getting massive play all over the Internet (and the Daily Show, and some of the afternoon news shows, I'm looking at you, MSNBC!) the last couple weeks.  Most of the hedge fund’s criticism focused on restaurant management, unfocused advertising campaigns and poorly executed final food products that look nothing like the glossy menu photos.  Right, like an actual Big Mac looks anything like this.  

I want to go after Starboard’s criticism of Olive Garden for being off base on a number of points that have nothing to do with market analysis and profit margins.  But more importantly, I want to take some of my favorite publications (Slate, HuffPost, The Daily Show) to task for jumping on the Olive Garden bashing bandwagon without doing any critical thinking here.  Largely because every few years it seems to get popular again to slam Olive Garden as inauthentic, unsophisticated, and a cheap knock off of the “real” Italian food one can find in hipper, spendier, urban establishments.  These repeated rounds of criticism grate at my soul for a couple reasons, but mostly it boils down to what Olive Garden represents in rural America and what it means when urban critics take the time to crowingly mock that on grounds that mostly turn out to be unfair. 

Olive Garden, across much of the broad middle of the country, is a nice night out.  An expensive night out to be sure, but one where the value of deals like the “neverending pasta bowl” acts as a counterweight to any lingering feelings of guilt or shame or panic that plague low income Americans when they take their families out somewhere fancy.  These feelings are real, they are constantly in the background, and they suck.  So don’t anybody dare (Starboard, or Slate, or Jon Stewart) gleefully throw shade about how it isn’t really that fancy after all.

No one has really questioned Starboard’s motives here, which is weird, because they are a hedge fund, so probably not pure as the driven snow.  There have even been some naïve (or poorly researched?) assertions that Starboard made this slide show (and is publicizing its criticism) in order to “shame O.G. into improving.”  This is absurd.  Hedge funds make their money from betting on companies failing, or from taking over failing companies, making them fail slightly less (or selling off any non-failing parts), and then selling them.  Why would a hedge fund give a crap if Olive Garden improves for its own sake?  Obviously Starboard must have a stake here.  And, sure enough, if you pry a little further, the hedge fund is engaged in a fight with Darden, the parent company of Olive Garden (and Red Lobster and Longhorn Steakhouses) over control of the company leading up to a big share-holder vote, preceded, conveniently, by all this bad press.  The slide show is Starboard’s takeover pitch, so we can’t really say they are neutral actors just rooting for Olive Garden’s best interests here, they are trying to make Darden look as bad as possible to justify their own investment strategy.

To bolster its argument against Darden, Starboard (and their echoing media critics) go after Olive Garden for being something it was never intended to be.  Starboard’s complaints include:

“Buy one entrée, take one home” and other recent promotions appear to be inconsistent with Italian culture – not to mention the extreme portion size is inconsistent with authentic Italian values and creates enormous waste.

Servers no longer encourage wine with lunch or dinner, even though wine is an authentic part of the Italian family dining experience.

Olive Garden Italian American food.  As I mentioned above, portion size and deals like the never ending pasta bowl are what draws American diners, particularly those in rural areas who cannot afford to eat out except on a few special occasions, to Olive Garden as a value experience.  Starboard is acting like people sit and eat all their endless salad, breadsticks, soup, and pasta in one sitting, ignoring the reality that Americans, unlike Italians, love to take leftovers home.  When you feel like you got two meals for the price of one (even if the price of that one meal for the whole family sets you back a full day’s wages), that value offsets your worries about taking the family out to eat at a greater cost than you’re comfortable with every once in awhile.  Sure, Olive Garden does the whole “our chefs learn their craft in Italy!” thing, but it is obvious they are an Italian American chain restaurant. 

Which is another thing, they are a chain restaurant.  Comparing their franchises to some 120 year old privately owned, handed-down-through-the-generations hole-in-the-wall on Mulberry Street misses the point entirely.  Many of the people who go to Olive Garden will never in their lives get to go to Little Italy.  They do not have regular access to prosciutto and ricotta salata and limoncello in their grocery stores (or in their whole towns, in their whole counties, maybe in the whole state!).  They know that Olive Garden is not an “authentic Italian” experience, but it is a really nice place, maybe the nicest around, to go to celebrate birthdays and promotions and graduations with family.  And even though the cost means you can’t go there all the time, you know you’ll get tons of leftovers when you do go so you don’t feel so bad about spending all that money once in awhile because you get so much value for it.  In my town, one of the only two other Italian restaurants for the last ten years pronounced it EYE-talian, so Olive Garden is pretty authentic for us.

Starboard also dedicates several slides to how Olive Garden’s endless salad and breadsticks are resulting in “waste” for the restaurant.  But if you read carefully, you can see what they are really concerned about is not food waste as we diners would think about it (uneaten salad or breadsticks), but wasted cost, that is, added cost to the restaurant that doesn’t result in added profits.  Yeah, okay, I can see why “endless” anything costs the restaurant money, and I can see why a company wanting to make the restaurant more profitable would recommend paring this back.  But this is also class warfare, let me tell you why.

For example, Starboard argues that only one breadstick per diner, plus one additional breadstick should be placed on the table.  Servers should then ask customers if they want additional breadsticks.  However, this ignores how customers eat at Olive Garden, and how servers operate at most casual restaurants. 

Most people come to the restaurant hungry.  If you are going out for a dinner as expensive (and as I mentioned, in rural areas, this might be the most expensive place around) as Olive Garden, you want to make sure you are hungry enough to take full advantage of the experience.  Hungry people will want to eat a breadstick or two with their salad while they are waiting for their entrée.  At casual dining restaurants, servers check back on diners at natural, but relatively set, intervals.  Shortly after your entrée is served, for example, then again when plates are looking clearer to see if you are thinking about dessert.  Therefore, if you eat one breadstick after you order, then putter at your salad, and there is one breadstick left for the four or five of you at the table, that means most of the people at the table are going to be annoyed.  You then have to flag down your server (because it is not a natural interval for them to have checked back on you already, they just took your order, after all!) and ask for more breadsticks. 

You only want maybe one more breadstick for each person at the table before your entrée comes but because you have to hail someone to ask for it, you feel like a pig!  And because you don’t go out to eat that often, you also feel a little ashamed to be hoovering up the endless breadsticks, which you now have to advertise by publicly waiving your arm around to ask for more.  So what Starboard is really saying is they want Olive Garden to incorporate subtle techniques of shame, intimidation, and manipulation of their diners’ class insecurities to get them to eat fewer breadsticks. 

This will work!  People will eat fewer breadsticks!  But they will also start to feel a little more stressed and resentful and negative about their Olive Garden experience, because nothing is worse than when something than used to be free is now a little less free (just think of checked bags on airplanes!).  But profitability due to decreased salad and breadstick “waste” will probably tick up briefly in the interim just long enough for Starboard to sell Olive Garden and make their own profit.  Ahem, hedge funds.

The criticism that has received the most attention, however, is Starboard’s accusation that Olive Garden has stopped salting its pasta water in order to obtain a longer warranty on its pots.  In a headline typical of the brouhaha this revelation has stirred up, Slate declared “Olive Garden Has Been Committing A Culinary Crime Against Humanity.”  

I would love to be able to say that Slate is intentionally using an absurdly hyperbolic title in order to mock Starboard, rather than mocking Olive Garden, but the article makes it clear that this isn’t the case.  Prominently featured just under the opening lines is the Starboard slide stating that Olive Garden has “lost its Italian heritage and authenticity.”  Pause for a minute: its “Italian heritage”? Seriously?  How can we think for a minute that Starboard is doing anything but pursuing an agenda here.  Slate goes on to inform readers of how necessary salting the pasta water is.  It is so necessary in fact that the article originally misstated why it is necessary.  The admonition “For the non-home cooks out there, salting water is essential for correctly flavoring pasta,” is followed by an ominous asterisk.  The Correction note states: “This post originally misstated that salting water helps pasta cook correctly by increasing the liquid's boiling point. Despite the dearly held beliefs of many home cooks, adding a moderate amount of salt does not significantly change the temperature at which water boils.”  Clearly, salting the water is a vital step…for some reason.

The Huffington Post is similarly confused about this supposedly indispensable step in one of the most basic processes in American (ahem, Italian) cooking.  Do you salt the water when it is cold or when it is hot?  Or after it is boiling?  Do you need to salt the pasta when you are salting the sauce?  Do you use enough salt to raise the boiling point of the water and make the brine taste like the sea?  Or is that too salty and you should instead use measuring spoons to get the amount just right?  The only consensus seems to be that we’re probably doing it wrong.  Also, apparently you can’t use iodized salt, which I’d bet a lot of us had in our pantries growing up, before sea salt was available in a grinder from Costco.  Does this mean the pasta of our childhoods always tasted “metallic” as the HuffPost claims?

Now, I’m not saying that Olive Garden shouldn’t be salting its pasta water.  It is the traditional way to do it and it does season the pasta as it cooks.  But I wouldn’t really put it on the level of a culinary crime against humanity either.  I imagine like any restaurant, their other ingredients, including their rich sauces, already contain high sodium levels, so I doubt, flavor-wise, that it makes much of a difference whether the pasta is salted or not.  A non-chef could probably only tell if you were eating the plain noodles (and who would go out to Olive Garden to eat plain noodles?).  The fact that the very critics who are supposedly so aghast that Olive Garden has flubbed the first step in Cooking Pasta 101 have such difficulty articulating what, exactly, that first step entails (beyond putting some type of salt into the water at some point in the process), suggests water salting, like many steps in authentic Italian cooking, may have more to do with tradition (and superstition), like throwing a little over your shoulder after you’ve tossed some in the pot (all home cooks do that too, right?  Or is it just us Italians?).

So rather than taking such delight in coming down on Olive Garden (and by extension all of us who still hold it in high esteem), for not being authentic enough, or Italian enough, and for being too generous (and isn’t generosity an authentically Italian – and Italian American – trait?) with portions and breadsticks, I would ask these critics who take their urban settings for granted to consider those of us who can’t pick up a hand-tossed roasted fig, prosciutto and gorgonzola pizza with balsamic reduction on the way home from work any day of the week.  For many of us rural folks, the opportunity to eat out and get anything approaching Italian food at a value point we can afford is a rarity we are grateful for.  Don’t make fun.

Ray Rice and forms of abuse more subtle than a left hook to the temple

In a bit of a belated follow up to coverage of the NFL’s handling of Ray Rice’s suspension for domestic violence, I wanted to bring a little more attention to types of domestic abuse that are harder to see and sometimes harder to escape.

Much of the NFL and the Ravens’ response immediately following release of the first video of the incident, which showed Rice dragging his then-fiancee's unconscious body out of an elevator, relied on Janay Palmer’s statements at the subsequent press conference in which she apologized for her own role in the incident.  When the full video of what had taken place inside the elevator later came out this month, the Ravens’ deleted a tweet they’d circulated back in May reiterating her line from the press conference, that Janay Rice “deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.” 

Not only did the team and the NFL hide behind Janay Rice’s statements accepting complicity in her attack, there was also a backlash against her in the news and social media once the truth came out for having made those statements, now revealed to be misguided or misleading, and for standing by Rice, even marrying him after the incident.  Op-ed writers declared her in need of therapy, and stated she deserves what she gets from now on, because she knew what she was getting into when she married Rice two weeks after the left hook in the elevator.

In response, on September 9, writer and domestic violence survivor Beverly Gooden started the harrowing hashtag #WhyIStayed to give voice to survivors’ explanations of what kept them in abusive relationships.  #WhyILeft started soon after.  What emerged were stories of fear and physical violence, fear for the safety of children, descriptions of stalking behavior and no help from the authorities.  But increasingly, there are also stories about invisible kinds of abuse such as financial abuse and immigration abuse. 

I have seen a little of how these forms of abuse play out in my cases working with domestic abuse survivors, I want to highlight these, because currently there is still not enough awareness of these problems, or help available for women going through these issues who want to get out of abusive relationships.  Domestic relations law currently does not take enough stock of these issues either, such that a woman* trying to end an abusive relationship usually needs to be able to show physical abuse in order to get the support of the court in the form of restraining orders or to obtain an edge in custody determinations.  Even statutory factors allowing a judge to weigh evidence of abuse will often define that abuse as physical abuse of the spouse or the children, or the judge will not recognize other forms of domination and control.

Financial abuse can take many forms.  A person’s finances are not just the money she has in the bank, but rather are intricately bound up with her job, her assets, and her debt and credit.  More nebulous assets like reputation can also directly affect a woman’s finances – the way she left her previous job will impact her ability to get a new one, debts she has been forced to leave unpaid will affect her ability to get new loans, she will be less likely to be able to get help in smaller communities the more bridges she has burned over money in the past.  Abusers can wreak utter havoc on a woman’s finances, in a way that seems scattershot, but the general trend is that he will end up with the assets in his name or in his possession and she will end up with the debts (or responsibility for them). 

Sometimes financial control can be overt.  She may have to ask to use the debit or credit cards, even to pay for groceries.  She may not know how to use a debit card and he may set up all their funds for direct deposit so that only he can access their cash and then dole it out for her.  He may sabotage her jobs by telling lies about her in the community, to her boss, or to her coworkers.  His stalking behavior or physical abuse, if that comes with the package, can also make her work life untenable and either directly lose her job – if, for example, he comes into the office and breaks things – or indirectly, by making her miss work or come in late due to altercations at home (violent altercations or something as simple as stealing her keys) conveniently timed just before the start of the workday.  But sometimes financial abuse can be more subtle than getting her fired or literally controlling the cash.

He more than likely earns more money than she does (I would be interested to find statistics on how this plays out in gay male relationships because while women are statistically less likely to earn as much as their spouses, gay couples, by virtue of both partners being men, at least in a generalized statistical sense, start on equal footing in this regard).  If she earns more or they are equal earners, her money will be 100% dedicated to the care of the children and the payment of household expenses.  He will find ways to sock his money away or buy himself nice things, or things that hold their value (such as a gun collection, which serves the dual purpose of posing a constant threat), while getting her to use her money, or even rely on the food bank or other benefits, to take care of the family.  In this way, she can never develop enough savings to leave him comfortably, or to pay down the mountain of debt they seem to be constantly accumulating.

He will find excuses to put the credit cards, auto loan payments, rental agreement, etc. in her name.  Maybe he will say he is worried his crazy ex will find him, or he will say his credit is already shot (cannot tell you how many times I have heard that one from women whose husbands turn out to have totally decent, or credit at least as good as their partner’s).  At the lower end of the income spectrum, they won’t own a house together and she’ll be on the hook for the full amount of the rent if she leaves or throws him out because her name alone will be on the lease. 

When she owns the house before they get together, he always gets her to put his name on it “just to be nice,” or “as a birthday present,” which has very real, practical consequences when they have a fight and she wants him “get out of my house” the police have to politely explain that it is his house too, now.  Despite the huge value of essentially giving him an interest in her house, I have never seen a case where the husband or sometimes even boyfriend paid the woman anything for that interest and I have never seen it happen the other way around, where he put her on the title just to welcome her into the relationship.

Similar shenanigans go on with cars.  The couple will each own a vehicle with outstanding payments.  He will say he wants to get a new truck, she can have his old truck and her mom can buy her old car from them.  So they set up some payments with the mom and refinance all the vehicles in order to buy his truck…which then conveniently gets entirely paid off in the process so that the only outstanding loans are on the wife’s and the mom’s cars.  And he is still on the title so if she tries to leave him, there is this constant lurking threat he could just go pick up the car from the wife’s place or mom’s car from mom’s place and drive off with her only means of transportation.  Ladies: if he has a set of keys, learn how to temporarily disable your vehicle so you don’t come of your house in the morning, or out of the grocery store to find it gone!  Removing the distributor cap usually works on older cars.  Ahh, the things you learn in family law.

This idea of moving money around and setting up over-complicated systems of using payments from one thing to pay off unrelated other things is something else I have seen repeated over and over.  This helps create the impression that he is the only one that can keep their finances straight (especially since he usually keeps all their documents physically locked away and she doesn't know the passwords to their electronic accounts) and teaches her that the financial world is too complex for her to understand.  In reality, these systems of using the payments coming in on the sale of one car to pay off the payments on another car, or having social security money direct deposited into one account under the wife’s name “as beneficiary” for the child, supposedly to “keep track” of the payments, and then electronically transferring it into another account usually serves no actual purpose beyond creating a veneer of complexity to intimidate her into staying away from the finances.

Since he has access to her social security number and all of her identifying info, as well as all of their joint financial information, he can start a business in her name, as long as he is willing to apply her electronic “signature,” without her knowledge.  He can take out loans and incur tax liabilities using the business, and even engage in dealings that could trash her reputation and get her into criminal trouble. 

When there is financial abuse in a relationship, the couple is almost always years behind in filing their tax returns; often as many years as they've been together.  Or they have filed together in a way that decreases his tax liability (because he is counting the whole family as dependents), when he contributes nothing of his income to the support of the children and, as the lower income earner, she would owe less or nothing in taxes if she filed separately.  But she agrees to file jointly “to be nice” because it saves him money, and he promises he’ll take care of paying the taxes and never does and the state and the IRS are coming after them both because they filed together.  And this happens for like seven years in a row.  And now she is dealing with their marital taxes and business taxes and property taxes if the house is under her name too, because he certainly isn’t paying on those either.

In Oregon when a person files for divorce, an automatic court order goes into place restraining either spouse from stopping payment on regular bills and dropping each other from insurance policies, access to joint accounts and the like.  However, enforcement of this order can be costly and time consuming and spouses representing themselves pro se in court may not understand that they have these rights or how to ask the court to enforce them.  Women who try to leave may find their husbands have canceled their car insurance or quit the jobs that provided their health insurance, only to start a new job and not add them to the new policy.  Women who realize their husbands are using a complicated system of financial transfers to siphon money from accounts they have access to into accounts that they do not might later be sanctioned by the court if they close accounts or cut off his access, trying to protect their own funds, not realizing they have violated the automatic financial restraining order.

Women who try to leave may find themselves sucked back into the abusive relationship again and again because out on their own they realize their credit is destroyed, they can’t get job references, and creditors exert constant pressure, hounding them for debts they may not even have been aware of.  Meanwhile she may be driving a car that is in his name that he could come legally pick up and drive off with if he knows where she is, covered by insurance he has canceled or threatens to cancel at any time.

There is a lot of overlap between financial abuse and immigration abuse because recent immigrants often do not have the language skills, education, or familiarity with American financial institutions to take over the running of the family finances if their spouse insists on controlling these.  Immigrants, and limited English speakers in particular, may find going into a bank and asking for statements or for help from tellers in making changes to accounts very intimidating, and admitting they don’t fully understand the answers they receive can be embarrassing, so some may leave without a full comprehension of their financial situation.  This may also lead them to sign off on documents they do not fully understand with only their spouse’s assurance that “it’s fine.” 

As in financially abusive relationships, immigration abusers will often limit their spouse’s access to her identification and travel documents in order to limit her ability to prove her legal residency or travel freely to her home country.  He may destroy them, or threaten to.  Perversely, he may then tell lawyers, judges, and police that he is terrified she will leave the country with the children, even though he has all the identity and travel documents for all the family members in his possession.  An immigrant’s foreign citizenship is often enough to convince authorities not familiar with immigration and international travel rules that she is a flight risk (and therefore also an international kidnapping risk) and sway temporary custody and other decisions in her husband’s favor, despite the abuse.

Immigration abusers may sabotage the immigration process by lying in USCIS interviews or refusing to participate when the process requires that the couple co-petition, such as for the removal of conditions on residence permits to become legal permanent residents.  Often, merely the threat of sabotaging the immigration process in this way is a sufficient tool of control to keep immigrant spouses in an abusive relationship because they may not be aware of other options, such as the Violence Against Women Act “self-petition” process which allows abuse survivors to progress in the immigration process without their abusive spouse’s participation.  Threats to “send her back,” particularly without the children, can be terrifyingly effective in keeping immigrant women under the thumb of their abusers.

By now, everybody knows that Ray Rice had a $35 million contract with the Ravens.  What you might not know is that $15 million of that was a signing bonus, $7 million was paid out as another bonus in 2013, and $3 million has already been paid out in salary.  Which means he’ll keep about $25 million of the funds even though the team has now terminated his contract.  At the time Janay Palmer was deciding what to say in that press conference back in May, she was looking at two possibilities.  She could do what she’s been doing for years and accept responsibility for “the role that she played” in her abuse and, in the process, become Janay Rice and hang onto the financial security of the remaining $10 million of her new husband’s contract (minus the $530,000 value of the 2 game suspension he initially received as a sanction from the NFL).  Or she could very publicly walk out on her only source of financial security, a man whose jersey many people are still wearing even now that the full video has come out, at a time when very few people really knew what happened in that elevator.  Looking down the barrel of that choice, Janay Palmer chose to stay where she was, which may have been, as it is for many women, where she felt safest.

*According to this HuffPost op-ed by Sarah Prager, covering another angle on domestic violence springing out of the #WhyIStayed hashtag, a 2012 CDC study found that 1 in 4 men (gay and straight) and 1 in 3 bisexual men had experienced physical violence, rape and/or stalking by an intimate partner.  Also, 44% of lesbian women and 61% of bisexual women.  This, compared to 35% of straight women.  These stats regard physical abuse, rather than financial abuse, but I wanted to point out that men experience abusive relationships too (often, but not always, at the hands of other men) and I am using feminine pronouns and examples in this post because my experience in my previous casework is based predominantly on examples of women leaving heterosexual relationships.

The Real Homeland: Nick Brody and a number of unmentionables

In the wake of this week’s news that Australia foiled a public beheading plot involving at least 15 suspects in support of ISIS, and that the US-led airstrikes also included Khorasan targets in Syria because of intelligence that they were planning to attack US planes, I thought I’d spend a little time covering what I believe to be the most insidious threat to the homeland in the post 9/11 war on terror. 

This threat, as I see it, is sort of related to the kind of lone wolf knife and gun attacks we've already seen, so I’ll spend a little time on them, as I understand some may not fully realize the extent to which our borders are already fairly well permeated by extremist groups.  I am not, however, going to put their names in print.  Hence the reference in the title to Nick Brody [the activated lone wolf operative in Showtime’s Homeland] and “other unmentionables”].  Like school shooters and mall shooters, many of these young men do what they do hoping for some sort of fame or glory, or even notoriety (any standard of attention) afterwards and so I will not use their names.

When I talk about “the most insidious threat” I am not really talking about these guys who read Al Qaeda’s “Build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” magazine articles and decide to go out and take jihad into their own hands, however.  Rather, I am talking about the really ugly thread of extremism and bigotry in our own country (and in Europe) that isolates and “others” Muslim communities and young Muslim men and makes them easy fodder for extremist groups hoping to radicalize them for their own ends.

I have noticed a derisive tendency among pundits in the last few days, usually when dismissing the possibility of attacks on American soil, to lump all of these guys together with the underwear bomber, the toner cartridge bomber, and the Times Square bomber.  The unspoken commonality is that all of these bombs failed to detonate.  I worry that the self-congratulatory pat on the back that comes with this snide derision has us looking the wrong direction while something (or multiple somethings) more dangerous sneaks up over our other shoulder.  For one thing, these guys are not all “failed” bombers, most obviously the Boston Marathon bombers succeeded at their goal, and for another thing, not all of these guys are bombers. 

Weirdly, when the terrorists aren't bombers, we tend to hear less about them, or somehow associate them less with terrorists, and I wonder if this isn't due at least somewhat in part to a gentle nudging, a “look over there!” on the part of conservative media to take the attention off how easily terrorists are able to commit mass murder with guns in this country.  The terrorists themselves have widely circulated this information in magazines and websites to potential lone wolves, that all they have to do is get themselves into the US, where guns are easy to come by legally, and then they can stock up as needed.

The Fort Hood shooting of November 2009, which left 13 people dead and 32 injured was a terror attack, at least according to its perpetrator (the government insisted on calling it “workplace violence” denying a terrorist motive), who was in communication with Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki before the shootings and visited numerous extremist websites.

In May 2013, two young men inspired by Al Shabaab websites hacked British soldier Lee Rigby to death with knives and a meat cleaver after first running him over with a car.  One of the suspects had previously been arrested in Kenya for trying to join and train with Al Shabaab.

In March 2012, a 23 year old French petty thief of Algerian descent carried out three shooting attacks in the French cities of Toulouse and Montauban, killing three soldiers, a Jewish teacher, and three school children.

But what really creeps me out are stories like this one, where a normal seeming guy from freaking Seattle of all places just decides that US foreign policy has resulted in enough civilian deaths in the Middle East and he is going to start killing fighting age American men in retaliation.  He shot four young men in two states.  Now yeah, okay, we can say there’s mental instability here, obviously.  Lots of us disagree with American foreign policy and spree killing isn't really our go-to mode of expression (hello, blogging, anyone?), but my point is lots of angry, disaffected young men in Seattle also just go out and commit normal boring crimes like burglary and drug dealing too, so what made this guy take up jihad instead of Black Ops 3?  Was it just radical ideologies on extremist websites?  Maybe?  But why was he looking for those websites in the first place?  What made him seek out those online communities?   

Which brings me to the insidious threat I really worry about, lurking in the shadows of our homeland.  The poison turning our own boys’ hearts away from their nation and toward an online network of worldwide haters.  Exposure to radical websites just isn't enough to turn an ordinary American kid into a terrorist.  Even an ordinary mentally unstable American kid is going to turn into an ordinary drop out, thug, or criminal before he turns into a terrorist.  No, we all confront all kinds of crap on the internet all the time.  To be vulnerable to the kind of seething nonsense Al Qaeda or Al Shabaab puts out there, something has to be carved out of a kid first.   And I think we are doing it to ourselves by letting crap like this slide by unremarked upon and unpunished. 

Oklahoma State Representative John Bennett (who is running for re-election unopposed) told a campaign rally last Wednesday that the goal of American Muslims "is the destruction of Western Civilization from within.  Muslims have worked their way into the government at every level.  Their teachings give them permission to lie to unbelievers to gain their trust.”  His speech took a darker turn when he called Muslims a “cancer that must be cut out of the American Society.”  He went on to say “I’m not advocating violence against anyone.  This country was founded on the freedom of religion, but I am not going to stand back and allow them to let Islam take over this nation.”  

Despite his head fake to the contrary, words like “cancer that must be cut out” and “not going to stand back” clearly advocate taking action against our fellow Americans based on religious identity.  Not only does this nonsense go unpunished, but gets applauded, with a standing ovation no less!  This bonehead in Oklahoma hardly “stands his ground” (according to the Sequoyah County Times’ gushing coverage of the speech) alone.  

A video went viral back in June, which I am not linking to here so as not to add even one view to its views, in which an American University law student in hijab asks a question at the Heritage Foundation’s panel, supposedly on Benghazi (but really on Muslim bashing) and is subjected to a series of false statistics and ad hominem attacks. What she asked was why all 1.8 billion followers of Islam worldwide are being generally lumped together as evil, and why the 8 million American Muslims weren't represented on the panel.  The panelist who answers her that 180 to 300 million Muslims are “dedicated to the destruction of Western Civilization,” dismisses the peaceful majority as irrelevant, compares them to the Germans during World War II, and questions the student’s citizenship also gets a standing ovation.

It isn't like these words of hatred and bigotry die quietly in the Heritage Foundation’s convention center or the Oklahoma restaurant where John Bennett spewed his filth.  These words get picked up on social media and spread around, from ear to ear and eye to eye.  Parents get them on their friends’ Facebook feeds and they remember that it is not okay to be kind to Muslim Americans in their lives.  They are a cancer, after all, and cannot be trusted.  That mom who watches the Heritage Foundation video on Facebook will decline the birthday party invitation from the little girl in her child’s class who wears hijab or has an Arabic sounding name, or won’t let her child go to an Eid celebration, because what would her friends think if she let her daughter be friends with those people?  And our communities move farther and farther apart and learn less and less about each other.   

Early and constant exposure to racism, ostracism, religious discrimination and bigotry in America will lay a foundation that will make our kids, American kids, more vulnerable to the predatory tactics of extremist groups in the future.  It is already happening.  As if looking in a mirror, we can see it even more clearly in the case of the Toulouse shooter in France.  After his arrest, his family made anti-Semitic comments, his brother said he was proud of him, people at the housing tenements created a sort of memorial for him.  Hate begets hate.  Describing the relationship between police and Muslim kids in the projects where he grew up, where the same kids get detained over and over, his friend told the Telegraph "All they do is chase you, search you, and insult you. They hate us and we hate them."

Public figures like John Bennet and Heritage Foundation Benghazi panelist Brigitte Gabriel and their ilk who spew hate and encourage others to hate and ostracize Americans out of fear and ignorance are the real Nick Brodys operating on American soil.  The applause they receive is a poison.  "Viral" videos of their bullying are truly an infection of social media.  Hate weakens the foundation of our democracy, it turns our children away from our communities and toward extremism, and it is going to come back and bite us in the ass.  Bigotry is the most insidious threat to our Homeland.

A Guide to Who's Who in Today's International Islamic Militants (Part 2)

Picking up where we left off yesterday, we move on to Al Shabaab, which has also had a big summer in the headlines.

 

Those of you who may know Al Shabaab from Somalia (okay, I admit, for a while, pretty much the only thing I knew about Al Shabaab was "=Somalia") might be surprised that their last two big news cycles have them in Kenya and Uganda, but first things first, let's get in a little history here.
 

We'll start with a moment we all remember, possibly the one thing most Americans know about Somalia.  The 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.  For those of you who have read the book or seen the movie, this was Black Hawk Down.  If you have not read the book, by Mark Bowden, it is fantastic.  Basically, following the collapse of the Somali government in 1991, clan warfare ensued in which numerous warlords attempted to gain control of the city.  American soldiers sent in to capture leaders of the Habr Gidr clan got sucked into horrendous street warfare with thousands of Somali fighters when first one, and then another of their Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by RPGs.  Following the loss of these American lives, the US got the hell out of dodge and stayed gone from Somalia for the next fifteen years. 
 

The US had gone in initially, with other UN actors, because of the famine, and other humanitarian crises brought on by the total lack of functioning government, which has largely persisted.  In the absence of humanitarian actors, all sorts of shady characters filtered in.  The Islamic Courts Union rose up in the early 2000s an an answer to the chaos.  With no government to provide justice and security, litigants began to pay local judges to settle disputes according to Sharia law.  The Islamic courts started to provide health care and education (surprise surprise, radical madrasas).  Wanting to get more actively involved in the policing aspect (which involved actual policing, like catching criminal sand looters, and also included the enforcement of Sharia law), some of the courts banded together and formed a militia in 1999, which began to take over parts of the capital.  Even this early, the ICU was receiving help (i.e. arms) from the Eritrean government and foreign jihadist fighters, in a trend that would also become pretty standard for Al Shabaab later.

 

In 2000, the ICU came into conflict with the warlords in the city.  The clans are more secular and had been already fighting for control among one another for almost a decade.  This conflict merged and morphed into the war with the transitional federal government (TFG) forces (backed by Ethiopia).  Eventually, by 2006, the ICU had lost enough territory that its leadership resigned and went into hiding.
 

The remainder of the ICU leadership regrouped with its hardline youth members, Harakat al Shabaab al Mujahadeen or Al Shabaab (the Youth), mashed up with Al Qaeda jihadi fighters, and began to wage guerrilla attacks on TFG forces (backed by 2007 by Ethiopian, Kenyan and US forces).  In addition to its political beef with the TFG, Al Shabaab maintains its religious roots in the Islamic courts movement and considers itself as waging jihad against the enemies of Islam (in which it includes Sufi Muslims as well).  In addition to the regular terror attacks which we've all likely heard about (suicide bombings, car bombings), Al Shabaab also targets humanitarian workers and, in case they didn't seem despicable enough, ELEPHANTS (for their ivory).  In 2012, Al Shabaab declared its allegiance to Al Qaeda.
 

Al Shabaab has been out of their usual wheelhouse lately, geographically speaking.  In 2012, there were a lot of rumors of Al Shabaab fighters supporting Al Qaeda efforts to take over territory in Yemen.  To punish Kenya for its support as part of the African Union force propping up the transitional government, Al Shabaab has engaged in a number of attacks there including the Westgate mall terror attack that killed 67, and a number of deadly attacks on automobiles on roads where gunmen stop cars and buses and mow them with machine guns.
 

Last weekend, Ugandan police arrested 19 suspects allegedly planning bombing attacks in Kampala and other Ugandan areas, and confiscated the explosives they intended to use.  Four years ago, an Al Shabaab bombing attack on two restaurants during the World Cup Final had left 76 people dead.

The recent planned Uganda attacks came as retaliation after Ugandan troops in Somalia reportedly provided some of the intelligence US forces used to kill Al Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane in an airstrike 105 miles outside Mogadishu on September 1, 2014.
 

Although Al Shabaab is often referred to as an Al Qaeda affiliate, it is Al Qaeda that seems to be benefitting primarily from the stream of arms and fighters Al Shabaab can provide.  This is generally true of Al Qaeda's central branch these days in that under Zawahiri's leadership it seems more reliant on its regional branches (Al Shabaab in Somalia, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, and Jabhat al Nusra in Syria) for support and relevance than the central supplier of strategy, funding, and top generals that it was under Bin Laden.  For this reason, I am not sure that Al Qaeda still belongs fully in the category of Today's International Islamic Militants. 

Because of their continued access to particular skill sets, such as bomb making and military strategy, their commitment to striking at the West rather than getting mucked down in regional squabbles, and their continued shady Gulf funding sources, Al Qaeda still has the best chance of reaching a big target on American or European soil.  However, the drain on their already stretched resources of having to fight ISIS on a number of fronts may limit their ability to effectively carry out another 9/11 sized plan with the same level of patience, concentration and funding for the immediate future.  Insha'allah anyway, God Willing.

A Guide to Who's Who in Today's International Islamic Militants (Part 1)

This will be Part 1 of a 2 part post on the latest trends in international Islamic militant groups.  For all of my gainfully employed friends, I thought it might be handy to break down all the acronyms you may be seeing in your newsfeeds but not have the time to look up or read about in depth.

 

Okay, we'll start with the the name or name on the tip of everybody's tongue, the One Direction of the 24 hour news cycle, if you will.  The trouble is, there seems to be no consensus on just what the name of this group is: ISIS? ISIL? IS group?  I prefer ISIL because I think it is a more accurate, if a little dated, translation, which I'll explain in a minute, but I am sensitive to the argument of talking heads on TV that it is more awkward to pronounce out loud and repeatedly than ISIS.

 

Here's the breakdown.  The Islamic State of Iraq was a conglomeration of Sunni Iraqi militant groups which fought under Zarqawi against American forces in Iraq and took over broad swaths of Iraqi territory as coalition forces drained out of Iraq (leaving the country's armed forces and other security structures in shambles, post-Saddam) in 2011.  They were so violent in their tactics as they tried to govern territory that included Anbar province and Kirkuk, among other provinces, that they eventually alienated everyday Sunnis and lost the group much of its power. However, by then, the group had gained a foothold in Syria.

 

As with Saddam in Iraq, Assad in Syria runs essentially a secular dictatorship dedicated to nepotism, holding onto power, crushing and torturing challengers, and hoarding resources.  It is really the Sunni insurgent groups that are projecting a Shia religious identity onto Assad, because the Alawites are a Shia spinoff group, to galvanize their followers, but he has not really enforced a religious identity in his country before.  He has had to reach out to Iran for resources during the civil war, but Syria used to be a place where women could wear western dress, go to college, travel around unaccompanied, etc.  The religious questions are much more relevant to the militias fighting Assad's regime than to the regime itself.  The insurgent groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq that took up the fight when the Arab Spring peaceful revolution in Syria gave way to civil war are Sunni extremists.  Assad has Drop Dead Fred's I'm Too Sexy on his iPod.  No really, he does.

 

Which brings us back to the name.  The Islamic State of Iraq, in Arabic is Al Dawla Islamiya al Iraq.  As their ambitions have broadened, the group has become Al Dawla Islamiyq al Iraq wa al Sham.  Al Sham in Islamic history refers to a big chunk of territory that includes Syria, part of Southern Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon, in addition to Northern and Western Iraq.  You hear some news services referring to ISIS (NBC, for example), for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.  Obviously, the group intends to take over more than just Syria so this name would be misleading.  Al Sham is also slightly different than what, in English, we would refer to (albeit somewhat archaically) as the Levant, but it is closer.  The White House and the UN use ISIL.  If I believed people were using ISIS to mean "of Iraq and al Sham," then that would be closest, but I think most people mean Syria when they say it.

 

The terrorists themselves have shortened their name to The Islamic State (I find the lack of a geographic designation a little chilling, no?).  Al Jazeera calls them the Islamic State Group so that viewers don't confuse them with an actual state somewhere (which was also a White House concern).  In Arabic, there is the shorthand Daish.

 

Al Qaeda's central leadership, as many know, is not a big fan of ISIL.  Perhaps there are only so many shady Saudi donors and disaffected youths to go around so this hostility is founded in some jealousy of the new kid on the block. Early on in Iraq, they were pushed out of Al Qaeda for being too extreme (because their violent tactics were alienating much needed local support) and they have jostled for power with Al Nusra Front, the face of Al Qaeda in Syria (the group that released American hostage Theo Curtis last month).  But now they are growing in popularity as they grow in fame and territory and they are starting to absorb some Al Qaeda splinter groups.  The Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria, formerly of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Al Qaeda's North Africa branch) announced they would join ISIL today. 

 

To clarify, whatever you call them (ISIS, ISIL, IS, Daish), these are the guys the White House and the State Department announced that we are at war with this week.  Leaving aside that Congress has not yet declared war, I just wanted it to be clear, whether we are or are not technically at war, these are the guys we are dropping bombs on. 

Stay tuned for another new post on Al Shebab, AQAP and more!

 

Have a request?  If you have heard or read about an international terror group you would like to know more about, let me know in the comments and I'll include your request in my Part 2 post.

 

The 2nd Egyptian Revolution (which I also watched from my sofa...just like the 1st one!)

I've received some texts and emails along the lines of "Egypt - WTF?!" this past week and I've been writing people back individually, when it occurred to me that wait, there might be a more efficient way to do this! Don't I have some sort of "web log" type thing somewhere on the Internets that can take care of mass communication? I do! So I fished out my old password and here I am, with my take on what is going on in Egypt and why it matters what the US decides to call it.

I think the best entry point into the conversation about what is happening in Egypt came from Millie, who asked how what is going on now is related to the 2011 Revolution. In the days leading up to 30 June, anti-Morsi protesters were tweeting "We thought democracy was enough. It was not." Obama said something along these lines as well ("Democracy is more than elections"). Although what is happening now is not politically connected to the last revolution, it is emotionally connected.

You couldn't find someone more politically opposite to Mubarak than the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Mubarak was a career military guy, a secular ruler whose only ruling philosophy was "grab more." The MB by contrast is a religious party. They support a broader cultural return to Sharia law (which is already a part of Egyptian law in the areas of finance and family law) and were persecuted as a terrorist organization under Mubarak's regime. Many of their leaders, including former-President Morsi, were imprisoned under Mubarak.

However, despite their contrasting political and religious views, the STYLE of Mubarak's regime set the tone for the MB's year in power. His administration was characterized by snagging power and resources in every corner of Egyptian industry and turning it over to his supporters. These industry magnates held ruling posts in his party and skimmed billions for themselves (and more of their cronies) leaving Egypt's economy shriveled and completely dependent on foreign aid. These guys are still around. In the wake of recent developments, don't be surprised to start hearing familiar names pop up. Ahmed Ezz, kazillionaire steel magnate and known crony/skimmer was only just recently found not guilty of charges relating to said skimming, which went on for decades. This lack of accountability also marks the Mubarak era, as few if any of Mubarak's supporters, or the perpetrators of such horrendous violence during the first revolution, have ever been successfully prosecuted. Mubarak himself had his guilty verdict overturned earlier in the year and his retrial has been rescheduled for August 17th.

Bear in mind (it will be important again) that many of the judges still in office today came up through the ranks in the Mubarak days. The Judiciary is generally understood as independent from the executive but also slightly politically aligned with the old regime.

So the protesters who led the first revolution, and many of those middle-class, religious but not extremist Muslim Egyptians who voted for Morsi, have been disappointed to see Egypt's first democratically elected party repeat the same all-encompassing power grab tactics learned from the Mubarak regime. There was always some consternation that the MB would not treat women and religious minorities fairly, and that fear has been borne out. However, the MB's style is less about discrimination, and more about the same "more for me and mine" mentality that Egyptians have been sick of for thirty years. What Obama and the Twittersphere were claiming is that democracy is not just having elections, it is about ruling democratically, which the MB hasn't done.

Westerners are also asking if Morsi was so unpopular in Egypt, and if Egypt really wanted a fair, secular, democratic state, why did they elect the Muslim Brotherhood to power in the first place? It was a super slim majority, but roughly 50% of the country voted for Morsi, right? Well, sort of. There is a question of timeline and a question of process here, which explain why a majority of Egyptians voted for Morsi and yet still a majority don't like him.

First, the timing: Although Morsi and the MB were elected by the people, elections were held so soon (because there was a lot of pressure on the military to give up power and their reputation was starting to tumble rapidly) after Mubarak's fall that the secular and youth opposition groups - which had never existed as organized political parties before - did not have enough time to organize and get their message out (or come to consensus about what that message should be). Only the MB and the old regime had any sort of organizational structure and so Morsi and Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak's former spy chief, were the candidates in the run-off election. Procedurally, this run-off election was inevitable because out of a number (5 maybe?) of unsatisfactory candidates, it was unlikely any one would get a majority of the vote. But it also gave a visual representation of everything that was wrong with the elections: that they came down to a "choice" between the old regime and a religious party previously known as terrorists.

This choice between the greater of all evils left a huge segment of the population - coincidentally the segment that had driven the revolution - with no one to vote for. Many didn't even vote because they couldn't bring themselves to support either candidate, but of the ones that I know who did, they voted for Morsi, because he campaigned on promises of respecting all Egyptians' rights and not imposing a religious state on secular Egyptians and they thought at least here's a guy who has spent his whole career opposing Mubarak, so that's something.

Turns out he was either lying all along or he is a weak leader who believes he has to give in to his radical religious flank, not only of his party, but also to keep the support of the Salafis who are even crazier (these were the guys flinging themselves at the armed thugs riding top speed into Tahrir during the Battle of the Camels during the first revolution because they believed if they died in battle against a secular ruler - Mubarak - they would go straight to paradise). The last year has been one betrayal of women's and minority rights after another. The parliamentary elections were rigged, giving seats that were supposed to be reserved for youth and secular and other minority parties to MB and Salafi candidates. The constitutional committee was so stacked with religious party reps that many of the youth and secular people left the process so as not to imply approval of the final product. All of the tiny handful of women on the constitutional committee were religious zealots. The final product made reference to sharia and did not contain protections for women and minority rights.

Morsi overturned court verdicts (remember, people at least sort of think the Judiciary is independent, so going up against them was bad PR for the MB), and made a declaration that his executive orders were not reviewable by the courts. Morsi proceeded to disband parliament, the judiciary (and various individual courts), and NGOs at one time or another throughout the past year in blatant, inept power grabs, and has spent so much energy on doing these ridiculous things - and then trying to defend them to the international community from whom he is requesting aid - that he has not provided jobs or economic stability. There has been little accountability for the deaths of the protesters under Mubarak and SCAF (army) rule.

Morsi has failed to prevent, and even implied approval of, attacks on religious minorities (and some church burnings of Coptic churches) including, a few weeks ago, most shockingly, a group of Shiite Muslims who were beaten to death by a mob of Sunnis (the majority in Egypt). There has not really been inter-Muslim sectarian violence in Egypt before. Even moderate Muslim Egyptians (and even not so moderate Muslims) were like "whoa, it is one thing to murder Copts, but murdering other Muslims? That's way off base!" They began to see the MB's leadership as divisive even among Muslims.

Electricity is always unreliable in Egypt during the summers when everyone is using AC but lately the grid has been further challenged by chronic gas shortages (the electricity and water pressure of many buildings is run on generators). It takes hours waiting in line to get gas and these lines make traffic even worse. There are even some entrepreneurial kids walking around with shisha pipes among the cars in line so you can rent a shisha to smoke while you wait. So now on top of not having jobs and seeing the Egyptian pound fall in value and countries refuse aid because your government has shown it isn't interested in governing, you have to wait in line for hours (whether you are trying to gas up or not), your apartment may not have power, or AC, or running water (if you are above the 3rd floor, which most people are) for hours every evening.

In anticipation of the 1 year anniversary of Morsi's election, a loose organization of youth and secular coalition groups called Tamarod (rebel in Arabic), started collecting signatures demanding Morsi step down and hold new elections. A sort of impeachment by vote of the people petition. They were pushing 30 June as the day when anybody unsatisfied with MB rule should come out to demonstrate peacefully. If Morsi did not step down, Tamarod said the peaceful demonstrations would become full civil disobedience (camping in Tahrir and outside government buildings to block traffic and government officials, and strikes in factories, schools, and government offices). They claim to have collected 22 million signatures on their petition. After seeing the huge numbers of people protesting this past weekend, some military estimates say at least 3 million people joined anti-Morsi protests in Tahrir square alone, the military gave Morsi a 48 hour ultimatum that either the MB respond to the demands of the people or the army would lay out its own plan for the future and take steps to implement it. Morsi apparently pointed to his neck and said "this before that," meaning he would die before giving up power.

So after the deadline passed, the generals just went on TV and announced Morsi was no longer president. Backed on the dais by the head of Al Azhar mosque and the Egyptian Coptic (Christian) pope, the armed forces announced the roadmap (which was also drafted in conjunction with secular and youth representatives such as Mohamed El-Baradei and the April 6th youth movement which was instrumental in the first revolution). The roadmap includes:

-Suspending the constitution provisionally;
-The chief justice of the constitutional court will declare the early presidential elections;
-Interim period until president elected. Chief Justice will have presidential powers;
-A technocrat, capable national government will be formed;
-The committee will offer all its expertise to review the new constitution;
-The Supreme Constitutional Law will address the draft law and prepare for parliamentary elections;
-Securing and guaranteeing freedom of expression, freedom of media
-All necessary measures will be taken to empower youth so they can take part in decision making processes

The military immediately transferred power to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, who was appointed by Morsi to that position on MONDAY, 2 days before he became president! Morsi appointed him Chief Justice from among 3 senior judges, all put in office under Mubarak. Al Adly has since transferred power to Mohamed El-Baradei who will be interim president. He is really popular with Western leaders because he is secular, and a technocrat. He also won a Nobel Peace Prize as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency so he is pretty attractive to the international community. He is not particularly popular within Egypt because Egyptians don't relate to him. They see him as too allied with the West and with Israel to really be one of them (Egyptians). He is obviously a smart man, but it remains to be seen whether he is clever. No leader could rectify all that is wrong with Egypt before the patience of the Egyptian people runs out. Luckily, El Baradei doesn't have to rectify all that is wrong with Egypt, he just has to keep everyone from killing each other until new elections can be held (and a new Parliament elected, and the constitution amended and approved).

New elections will pose a similar problem as the first round of elections did. It is almost guaranteed that secular and youth groups are still not organized enough to put forward presidential candidates that could win. They just don't have the infrastructure and the MB and Salafis do. So the MB could very well win again and it would be much harder to argue that the people don't REALLY want them there if they won 2 elections.

Finally, the question of whether or not this is a military coup. This seems to be all that Western journalists can talk about (and they all agree it is a coup) and Egyptian and European media keep saying "why does it matter if it was a coup if it is what the people want?" I think both groups are wrong. I personally do not think this was a military coup (I'll explain in a minute why this is a political rather than semantic determination) and there is one obvious reason why whether it is or isn't a coup seriously matters for the future stability of Egypt.

First, not a coup: I can definitely see that from the MB's perspective, this felt like a coup. Military generals barge into your palace and tell you to give up your democratically elected presidency or they will toss you out on your ear, it is going to feel like a coup. But it isn't. Because you seized so much power, perverted the constitution, and declared your decrees to be above the law, there was no legal means to impeach you. Your people rose up against you and although many populations are not fortunate enough to have their own army, the Egyptian people do. So they sent their generals to you and said agree to early elections or else! And you did not agree, so something like 30 million people across your country demanded "or else." "Or else" in this case cannot really be seen as a military takeover because the military did not take over anything. They handed power immediately to a judge, ostensibly independent of the executive and political parties, and in fact also appointed to Chief Justice by the president himself only days before. How can it be a military coup if the military never held power? The military did not remove the president. The army acted as the enforcement arm of the general public and the people impeached the president for failing to govern.

Why does it matter what we call it? It doesn't matter what we call it as long as we don't call it a coup. US law forbids aid to a government where a military coup has taken place until democratic elections are held. The Egyptian military is 100% dependent on US aid to operate and the Egyptian military is the only stable institution left in Egypt (besides the judiciary, and they don't have tanks). So attention media types: stop calling this a coup. Call it a takeover, a transition, an impeachment (my preference). Call it a scuffle, a power grab, an illegitimate arrest if you really want to show your disapproval. But stop calling it a coup. Attention Egyptians: stop saying it doesn't matter if the West calls this a coup because YOU know the truth. It really does matter what the West calls it, so instead start teaching the West a new vocabulary more helpful to your cause (and your economy).

Whether it is or isn't a coup, I think the US will find a way to not call it a coup. The US's role and position in all this is based only on money and Israel. We will support whoever can provide a stable government that accepts our money and our foreign policy demands with respect to securing Israel. We do not care if that is the military, the MB, or even someone more extreme. For this, the US, both Obama and the American ambassador Anne Patterson, got a lot of hateful signs in the protests. The protesters see the US as supporting the MB, which isn't exactly true, we would support any strong leader willing to buckle to our own policies, and we will continue to dump money into Egypt, regardless of whether there is democracy or human rights, as long as we think Israel is still protected there. But if we come to define this as a coup, our own laws will prevent us from giving money to Egypt until democratic elections can be held. We have already disbursed all our 2013 aid funds to Egypt so the army is set no matter what until 2014, but by then there had better either be elections or some new diction in the West about what went on this week.

So there's my take on what has happened so far. Looking forward to what happens next...