In the first post amid the revolution’s high days I indicated my theory which sounded a bit conspiratorial at the time. It concluded that a parallel military coup is ongoing with the popular revolution, and that Mubarak is a burned card that the coup will use wisely in attempts to contain the popular revolution to secure a pseudo-transformation to democracy to ensure the revolution is tamed, and then rounded and finally domesticated. Let me not go through the details but I think now my mere theory has been confirmed rather than refuted. Omar Suleiman himself pre-mubarak resignation threatened that there will be a coup, which was stupid of a man who was sadly Egypt’s spy master to declare bluntly their plan.
Days have gone by since the coup has revealed its face. However the face revealed by the coup is that of “we are here to make sure the demands of the people are fulfilled”, which is blatantly not true. The insistence on the ministry of “Field Marshal” Ahmed Shafik with ministers of clearly shameful decent resembles everything but the reform movement it is meant to indicate.
For example, the interior minister “general Wagdy” is a man of shameful Mubarak era reputation and no one, save Omar Suleiman himself, was able to alienate the public against him and his ministry through one speech as much as Wagdy did. Save saying that Wagdy was the security supervisor of the 2005 elections which goes in record as one of the most blatantly rigged elections in the galaxy.
Secondly, the minister of of Oil and Exploration was a prominent board member of the company tasked with exporting gas to Israel, an act that the supreme court ruled was illegal and of course was ignored by the Mubarak regime which regularly circumvented the judiciary system.
Thirdly, the minister of foreign affairs Mr. Ahmed Abu el Gheit was the same minister in all previous Mubarak administrations of recent history and his position against the revolution is matched only by that of Mubarak himself. Hassaneen Hykal met him once and Abu el Gheit asked him “why did you meet hezbollah in Lebanon, do you think you represent the Egyptian people?” and Hykal simply replied with the same exact question, to which the answer has always been a big fat NO.
Fourth, the army refuses to remove the state of emergency, with futile pretexts. I would say okay, do not remove it, but let us use it to arrest Mubarak, Gamal Mubarak, Safwat Sharif, Zakarya Azmy, Mofeed Shehab, and Fathy Sourour. Why do we need evidence to arrest them, why not use the emergency state, or is it only used again “bad elements who want to ruin the country” when evidently it has only been used against patriotic Egyptians and not against those who indeed ruined the country.
Fifth, as a small nugget of information today was the an Army General Mr. Tarek something! was appointed as head of the national broadcasting service. A move that has not happened since the military coup of 1952. If this says anything, it says WTF! and it shows you the full rounded approach of the current coup to round the revolution and the revolutionaries. Add to this the national news paper this morning reporting “a million man march” asking to prosecute Mubarak when it was actually and clearly calling for the Shafik government to step down!! which proves they are willing to burn more of the Mubarak card to try to curb the revolutionaries by blatantly lying and hoping to hide the fact that the people are asking for the Shafik government to resign.
Sixth, Mr. Shafik reportedly banned a show on a private TV channel because speakers were ranting against him and his government. This was confirmed by multiple sources and is now 100% prompting Mr. Elbaradi to condemn the act in an official statement on this twittwe account as a clear sign the old rule is still alive and very well. You see, now it is okay to talk about Mubarak, the card they will keep burning, but it is NOT okay to talk about the military coup’s own government. AWESOME!
Seventh, last night the army 100% confirmed attacked the protesters who decided to hold ground over night in front of the parliament, in Tahrir and else where. They were brutally attacked, electrified, and beaten up! in the morning the army issued two statements 1- an apology saying there were no orders, when there clearly were orders 2- a followup statement saying force was used against outlaw elements infiltrating the protests, which the protesters were few in numbers and knew each others well and clearly stated following this statement that there were no infiltrators, whatsoFFREAKENever. This shows that the army is testing waters and stretching limits of use of force emboldened by the low number of protesters. Which is clearly a wrong reading of the signs because, I’m one of many who are now preaching escalation, energizing, remobilizing and going into full scale protests again, and from speaking with a few people who are lucky to be on the ground in Cairo, this message is coming across well.
Then, add the evidence that state security is working to induce sectarian violence and cause division between muslims-muslims and christians-muslims with documents pointing to their activities surfacing every now and then. To those claiming this is done without army’s leadership consent is laughable, and calls for pity to those who think so or are ordered to say so.
So now what? There is indeed a military coup, I firmly believe. The only reason the military is cautious and testing the waters carefully is the clear message the leaders got from some lower ranking officers that they support the revolution, hence a violent uncoordinated crack down could lead to splits within the military ranks which could prove catastrophic. Add to this the international pressure, followed by the tremendous pressure of the popular revolution itself. The way forward for the military is paved with difficulties but the road map the follow is very simple. They need to 1- curb the popular uprising and they think they got that witnessing dwindling numbers, which I said before I think is a misleading sign. 2- introduce the brtual police force back to the streets to do their dirty job so they remain clean handed and this is proving challenging. 3- round the revolution and control a counter-popular uprising to support themselves which is proving a lot more challenging they they had thought.
The way forward for our revolution is to escalate, escalate and escalate. Those who are afraid of escalating are two groups mainly 1- government agents posing as revolutionaries 2- idiots, seriously! they have good intentions but are gullible minorities who shouldn’t be catered for at all. Escalation means going back to Tahrir and other areas around Egypt. Hold ground there day and night, paralyze the government and delegitimize it through peaceful but persistent protesting. They will fall, much like Mubarak did! nothing can stop people power … if we stay united and focused!
Filed under: Egypt
It has been perplexing for every Egyptian who has any interest in politics to try and understand the dynamic behind the Egyptian uprising. I have been personally participating in calling it a revolution,and I still believe it is one, but…
What if we have all been fooled/used? which I would not mind if we still get a big part of what we want, but I still hate being fooled without knowing it. As long as I know, then no worries, we can get along. Let me clarify what I mean here:
Before the popular uprising in Egypt there were two powers in the country. The first is the ruling national democratic party (NDP) and the second is the army. The NDP is Mubarak’s legitimacy machine, it is the front of Mubarak’s political power. It is protected by the internal security forces (1.5 million strong), and financed by an endless list of millionaires and billionaires who have grown organically around the regime. The Army is largely believed to be loyal to Mubarak too, but has not been maintaining any felt political presence in the country.
My understanding is that for the past 10 years since Mubarak started the massive economic reform, the country’s two power brokers (NDP and its cronies and security forces vs. Army) have become extremely polarized. It became clear to everyone that Mubarak was preparing his son Gamal Mubarak to inherit the presidency, forming a new dynasty. This implicitly clear move have always been supported and popularized by the NDP, their security forces and new über rich business tycoons. However, while the army never had an official position, it was always widely reported in circles of decision makers around the world that the Army does not approve of the Gamal Mubarak camp and their increasingly dominant position that seemed endorsed by Mubarak.
A third power broker that started strongly entering the game was the popular Egyptian movement that is largely of secular ideology and is formed of what is now referred to as the “FaceBook” folks. Brave, young folks joined by other patriotic Egyptians from all ideological sides including the Muslim Brotherhood and the common street man etc. This third power broker have been increasingly embarrassing for the regime which consistently tried to crush it through its NDP/Security forces machine witht he support of the new class of money brokers in the country.
Now, in the face of this increasing tension in the country here is my “personal” plan, whose resemblance to reality is merely coincidental:
- Army chefs, who have been always in charge of presidency since 1952 can’t really accept the current status quo and Mubarak’s increasing negligence of their future and his tendency to rely on the power of the NDP/securityforces/business tycoons complex.
- The #Jan25 protests seemed to be gaining momentum. The army covert operation department decides to intervene, under cover, during the Anger Friday on January 28th. The undercover operation in the Army ensures that the protesters win the battle and that the security forces are cornered in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez.
- the leader of the security forces, acting under the name of Mubarak (who is not aware of the Army’s plans) decide to resort to the book of Machiavelli and resort to the chaos scenario by retreating all security forces, opening prisons, and arming paid thugs to wreck havoc in the country.
- Under the watchful eye of Mubarak, now the Army has to intervene to secure the vital facilities of the country, which it indeed does.
- The army announces it will not use force against protests, and maintains neutrality. This eomboldens protesters who now have the NDP/Security Forces/Business tycoons totally cornered, all while the Army is still clean handed.
- The Army clearly is in control now, what we need is political power. Hence, move two former army generals to be vice president and prime minister
- The NDP et. al try to use their broken security machine to restore order through chaos and thugs aatacks, but under pretext of the crimes committed by the NDP heads/Security Forces/Business Tycoons the army (now legitimized through Shafik and Suleiman) issues patriotic orders to arrest the “symbols of corruption” from all the three mentioned categories! hence the resignation of NDP heads, the arrest orders of some NDP ministers, members and businessmen who were considered Mubarak’s strong men in the country.
- Doing all that evoke a sense of normalcy by making it known that Mubarak is in control, and that his son Gamal is in the country. While the truth is both are under arrest of the military and both can’t leave or go anywhere even if they wanted to. This enables you to have an emergency exit and use one or both as scape goats if need be. Both are also essential symbols of power for the NDP/Security Forces/Business Tycoons complex.
This scenario might sound weird at first sight, but is in no way far fetched. Strange observation over the past few days are:
- The uprising was most successful in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez. The three stations of the Egyptian Army
- increasingly common reports of the army itself arresting journalists and capturing them and sending them to intelligence, then releasing them indicate a suspicious situation where the Army is apparently in control of the state intelligence and not the police. Possibility of cooperation is unlikely!
- christian amanpour indicated Gamal is with his father, and she saw him in the same place. Gamal is no hero, and he is a well known pussy and would normally have escaped, if he could, at least until the situation is clear.
- The insistence on Mubarak being in power while his power base is undermined by the Army leaders is perplexing
It is unclear if any of this scenario is true, or to what degree are the Americans or Europeans informed. It is also unclear if the new masters in power in Egypt will ever allow a free and democratic Egypt, although I think it is in their best interest but they are old school and changing their minds might prove tough.
UPDATE: Some asked me so what about the deadly attack on the protesters to try and take back Tahrir Sq.? Well, it makes only sense in the above scenario when we imagine that the army leaders would want to evacuate the square, and end the popular #Jan25 revolution so that they are under no pressure from such a movement, hence ending both enemies at once the popular movement and the NDP machine. So, before sacking the leadership of the security forces (Habib El Adly and his cronies) they fuel the attack, hoping it works and if it doesn’t (or even if it does) they would still point fingers at Habib El Adly and the old guard.
Also, it is becoming clear day by day that the detentions of journalists, activists, etc. are all directed by the Army at this moment which seem to have assumed control of the internal intelligence and law enforcement machine while still keeping their hands clean … but not for long if this continues!
Filed under: Uncategorized
This Document has surfaced all over the web. It was marketed by some fools as “Mubarak’s Wealth”, which could have been a wee bit more believable had it not been for the absurd amount of money involved, namely 620 Billion US$, yes with a B. Even if the amount of money was believable, and it is not, it is still hard to authenticate this document despite the fact that all names of people and companies mentioned are legitimate. For example the ECOTRADE AG which is the current holder of the bond does exist. It is an obscure Swiss company with a trivial capital of 100,000 CHF. Companies with such names in the Swiss banking ecosystem are usually fronts of shobby activities. All other names mentioned are of factual people and entities. Again, the main absurdity of this document is the ridiculous amount of money involved, that is larger than the entire Egyptian economy itself, which is not small to say the least.
One thing that perplexed me, is that the bond is guaranteed by the international monetary fund (IMF), which negates any thinking that this is a personal Mubarak Bond if the document has any authenticity. The ministry of finance is also mentioned. Yet, it is signed under the Mubarak personal name and not under his capacity as “President of Egypt” which makes it all the more bizarre.
Hmmmm, the amount of money is just absurd! seriously! and it is anybody’s guess what this document is, what it means and if it is fake or authentic why was it released either-way.
Pray for the country! Freedom loading regardless!
Filed under: Uncategorized
Current Personal Mood: Agitated
And by that I do not mean the biggest why of all, that is why are we here? This question never really interested me, not when I was younger and not now. This fact in itself raises another set of whys. For example, why do some things interest us and others don’t? why do we like someone and not another? to answer by saying I like X because X has these features is not an answer at all, for why do you like these features and not others?
My biggest why dilemma since a young age was why do the things that happen everyday to me, be they are good or bad, happen? If you are a God person you can resort to the answer that it is all part of God’s plan. And if you are not a God person then you might argue that these things happening are the result of the random interactions happening everyday from the biggest events down to the quantum level. Either way you have not answered the question. If it is God’s plan, then why did he choose this particular thing to happen over choosing another? if you answer that is because it is for the best for us then you might wonder wouldn’t an omnipotent God be able to get the same best outcome any other way? And if you think it is random, then you surely know that there is no such thing as randomness per se, for it is if the quantum level effects are responsible then you agree that the observer effect must be responsible for the outcomes, in which case why did we have the thoughts we did leading to these quasi random outcomes?
Any way you put it, an answer to a why question is always an abstraction that provides a placebo of being answered, don’t you think? Now that is exactly my problem. Cause and effect are then purely illusions, figments of our imagination that help us make sense of an otherwise seemingly senseless world without this illusory abstract idea of cause and effect. It does sound nihilistic I admit, but let it sound as it wants to, but know that I’m not nihilistic myself.
So, I meant to say that what I just told you kind of troubles me. I try to teach myself to relax and not think of why do the things that happen happen. However, at a fundamental level, I remain uncomfortable for having no answer to this seemingly mundane problem. And I say it is mundane because I’m sure each one of you can list similar episodes about life other than the why issue that are to many people frivolous, but are equally unsettling and abstruse on second thought.
Current Personal Mood: Clairvoyant
Filed under: Uncategorized
“The Kiss” by Auguste Rodin, self-photographed at Tate Modern London: July 2009 (Clickable)
Current Personal Mode: Contemplative
A question that I had for a while (dating back to 2006) kept me busy trying to find an answer lately. My question was, what is the future of the geospatial content business?
A while ago TomTom acquired Teleatlas in a deal worth aprox. 2 billion euros; Nokia also acquired Navteq in a deal worth approximately 7 billion dollars. Both were cases of companies that are traditionally in the hardware business acquiring companies in the content business, geospatial content in this case; up until now both acquisitions have not yielded much change in business models of both companies. Very recently also Ordnance Survey of Britain announced opening up its data to the public after an initiative by Gordon Brown under the influence of Tim Berners Lee et al. This was a long over due move; I sensed that Ordnance Survey lacked a strategy and vision behind this move which seemed forced on them for political reasons; ordnance survey apparently preferred cowering in their little shelter of selling maps. Lastly, google has a while ago decided to build their own dataset, which is proving to be a costly and erring decision in retrospect according to some commentators.
A common question traditionally asked by geospatial science folks I have met what is special about spatial? has many answers depending on which perspective you take. I was of the opinion that there is nothing all that special about spatial if your perspective is business, including content; all content are expensive and all are complicated by intellectual property issues. So bear with me while I try to explain a few things pertaining to the GI content business.
A recent article I stumbled upon makes the point that media companies are not in the TV business, which is the assumption many companies make. Being in the TV business means you are in the business of making your content available in discrete channels. This becomes very apparent when you consider the newspaper business where lately industry insiders are increasingly asking for charging on their content. A newspaper according to the traditional industry view is in the business of content distribution across the paper/online discrete channels, and if you use the paper news era as your metaphor then you also need to pay for the news content accessed across other channels; after all your 3 euros for a magazine are due no matter how you access this magazine, right? These ideas are at the core of Robert Murdoch’s NewsCorp war against google, and is also what is driving Newscorp’s executives to declare recently, in a widely publicized news conference, that their strategy is to charge for content. The New York Times also recently announced its plans to charge for its content online following the same rational that is seemingly dominating the news industry in particular, but not necessarily the entire media industry; I will illustrate that some others do get it right.
Behind this view I just explained, I see the implicit assumption that I think is wrong. The assumption is that media companies consider content as their product; it is what they are offering to sell to customers much like P&G sells you toilet paper. They assume that almost any type of content can be treated like a commodity that customers are willing to pay for, much like they pay for all other products. I argue that this is the wrong view to take if you are in the modern content business, and here is why:
- You can view content differently if you stop assuming that it has intrinsic value, even if it actually does. My proposition here is that the value of content is determined by the size of the audience around this content.
- This simply means that the more the people access your content, and the higher the frequency the more valuable your content becomes.
- This is a shift in thinking because you need not consider your content to be the product, but simply a means to an end which is the real product— the value/profit center is the audience not the content.
- By placing barriers on content access you are shooting yourself in the feet—paradoxically, the more barriers you place on content access and the more restrictions you put on distribution channels the lower your audience size—a simple fact supported by research.
- This paradox means that your content when viewed as a commodity is devalued exponentially as your audience size decreases, and so will all you channels of revenues (e.g. advertising).
- The question is then how can you increase your audience size and then monetize these audience? and this question has endless answers depending on the type of the audience and the nature of the distribution channel. What matters here is the shift in focus from content as a product to content being means to create audience.
So let me finish with an example to wrap up on the geospatial content business with some conclusions.
Let us take the recent announcement by Nokia to giveaway for FREE the satnav software utilizing Navteq data to all its handset owners with compatible devices (a user base of approx. 80 million). Nokia’s CEO Anssi Vanjoki had this to say about the move:
Right now, what is happening is we are unleashing all this power based on the Navteq acquisition which will help Nokia in three different ways: first of all this becomes a tremendous average sales price defender for our products because it will be completely unique – there is nothing similar available from anyone else; secondly this will be a demonstration of the capabilities and precision of the Navteq maps, so their business will be improved; and thirdly, there are all these developers that are developing applications based on the quality of the maps and then we can distribute those through Ovi store which is another business opportunity for us.
This is a bold move. They have already invested 7 billion dollars in Navteq, i.e. the investment is made and it is time to figure out how to utilize this investment to enhance the company’s position in the market. Their choice? audience, audience and more audience. Vanjoki’s three points above all point to a focus on creating a large audience base, then strategy to monetize this base:
- give the content for free
- bundle that free content with their core product so they increase their competitive advantage via a unique product offering. i.e. increase your core business sales volume (hardware) by improving your handset offering.
- this increases their audience
- open the ovi ecosystem to endless value-add potential by developers to further monetize your audience
- use the ovi store ecosystem to monetize these audience
It is a closed loop of increasing handset sales (their core business), which increases their audience base around their content, then monetize the audience in the ovi store ecosystem.
To me this is an example of the future of the content business. Content as much power as the size of the audience you can attract to your content, reduce access to it and you devalue your content, I call that “the paradox of content”. So here is the distilled recipe that I can comprehend at the moment:
- lower access barriers to you geospatial content
- diversify your distribution channels
- build and expand a loyal audience base
- leverage an ecosystem to monetize your audience base.
Admittedly, monetizing audience is the tricky bit and is worth another long discussion on its own regard. However, open environments foster innovation, and by opening up access to content and providing basic infrastructure you can spur an unforeseen wave of innovation by developers and startup companies, which might give you a clue on how to solve the monetization problem.
Any thoughts?
Current Personal Mood: Active
Taken in Cairo in August Last Summer (clickable)
This is what happens when I’m away from Germany visiting home. Healthy food and sports are gone, caffeine is significantly reduced, and Shisha is all the rage again (back to the 90s!). The three chaps in the photo are among my best friends in Cairo. One is a graphic artist (guess which one?!) and the other two are white-collar workers who are doing the seemingly boring, but well paid jobs of accounting and financial management. We are gathered in a serene weekend morning at a café in the Heliopolis suburb of Cairo where we all grew up. That day we were smoking shisha, chatting about Gott und die Welt, and as you can guess, checking our email 
Cairo is such a big messy place. You can have a meal for 1 euro, and you can indulge in a 1000 euros meal, it all depends on where you find yourself in this city. Cairo at night for me is a place of endless memories from my other life (refer to Duma Key by Stephen King if you wonder what I mean by “other life”). It never sleeps and is full of potential that can either entertain you or overwhelm you depending on how well versed you are in the local Cairo lingo.
As a lover of big cities, I would highly advise you to put Cairo on your list of places to visit outside the western hemisphere. The only catch is that unlike other big cities in the western hemisphere, local knowledge is the order of the day and not just an option. Simply, you can never enjoy/survive Cairo unless you are in the safe hands of an insider. And trust me on this one … I’m one hell of an insider 
Current Personal Mood: Lively
Filed under: Uncategorized
The leader of positive psychology researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is most known for his work on the state of Flow. Flow is this state many have experienced either on a regular basis or sporadically, it is when the time flies by, total immersion in the task at hand, and a sense of serenity and joy flows through you while doing something that truly absorbs you. People who are blessed enough to have their passions as their careers are at the top of the flow scale.
taken in Barcelona last summer
I wakeup in the morning, I rush through breakfast and get my work gear in order and jump into my outfit. Running through the street and into my work I bump into people and people bump into me, and it strikes me sometimes that we are all souls swimming in a fish bowl day after day after day. Each one is unique, and life spares no one the personalized spell that it casts on us. This spell is the source of each one’s uniqueness but the fact that it is cast on each one of us is the only thing we share in common, life spares no one. At times I stop, and I chat with people, I connect and see through their eyes into their world, I see through my own apparatus, the inherently limited reality sensing capacities that I have. But those moments, where I stop, connect and see through people’s eyes are for me a state of flow. Admittedly, not all that one sees is something he would like, but the state itself is what matters. Connecting with people emotionally, is for me a source of flow, it is this capacity to connect that keeps my child-like wonder sparked.
Little in fact are the states of flow I went through over the past few years aside from those experienced in the sense of connection with people. Research shows similar percentages of how often people go through states of flow in different parts of the world. Research in Germany, for example, showed these results in response to the question “Do you ever get involved in something so deeply that nothing else seems to matter and you lose track of time?”
For instance, in a recent survey of 6,469 Germans, the same question was answered in the following way: Often, 23 percent; Sometimes, 40 percent; Rarely, 25 percent; Never or Don’t Know, 12 percent.
I would fall in the 25% “rarely” segment. So, what is the problem exactly? why am I not in the 23% segment that experiences flow often? I pondered this question for a while, and informed myself about the state of flow in search for an answer. It seemed like all I could find are conditions for experiencing flow that seemed general and applicable to any task, but I was slightly disgruntled, and a wee bit disappointed when many resources neglected the question that I thought was fundamental. Namely, how inline is what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis with my mission in life? it is about how much of what I do matches my inner-self or my deep consciousness?
After a while, I started doubting if I really liked my job all that much. Does my job comply with my personal mission statement? Will the dots ever connect in a meaningful way later in life? I then asked do I deeply enjoy my job, for real? or do I just pretend that I do? All these questions centered around the fact that something could be wrong with my job, or that it does not match my inner-self anymore. But then suddenly I had an aha-moment, where another single question seemed more fundamental than the first set of questions I asked. The question was “Do i really not enjoy my current job, or is it that in my current state of being I would not enjoy any job? This question is fundamentally different. While the first set of questions were looking for exogenous factors resulting in a scarcity of flow in my life at the moment, the second question shifts the focus to the more fundamental endogenous factors. The task now becomes that of self realization and reflection, to look inside before looking outside which, I think, should logically precede proposing any hypothesis about the exogenous factors.
Current Personal Mood: Calm
