Andy In Egypt

Our nephew Andy is visiting from the states and of course we have to visit the pyramids.

Andy Inside a Pyramid

New Video Camera

My New Computer

Happy Christmas

Cool tree! Kocht deze Kerstboom met ingebouwde lichtjes (kan het nog erger...) hier in Cairo. Dacht dat Brian het ongelooflijk kitsch zou vinden, maar tot mijn stomme verbazing vindt hij het prachtig...of toch niet?

The Age: If GPS can't tell, you're in Egypt

APPLE'S iPhone has proved a sensation since it went on sale, rapidly becoming the most popular mobile phone in the US and selling almost 5 million handsets worldwide.

As the company prepares to sell the award-winning gadget in Egypt, users there will have to go without a popular feature: satellite navigation.

Egypt has banned the import of all global positioning system-enabled devices, claiming it is a military-grade technology that can be used to help pinpoint government buildings or be used by terrorists.

As a result, Egyptian buyers will not be able to use GPS. According to documents filed on Apple's website, "GPS is not available while in Egypt, or when using an Egyptian phone", which "is consistent with Egyptian law regarding GPS enabled devices". The company would not comment further.

Apple is not the first company to fall foul of the ban, which has been in place for five years.

The Finnish phone manufacturer Nokia has been in negotiations with the Egyptian Government to allow it to sell its GPS-enabled handsets but so far without success.

The ban has created a thriving blackmarket in GPS devices and high-end mobile phones.

Thousands of Egyptians sport handsets, such as the Nokia N95, while satnav gadgets are often used by groups trekking in the desert or off the beaten track.

"It's a direct link to the satellite, so there's no way they can stop you," said Stefan Geens, a Swedish blogger who lives in Cairo.

He said he regularly used GPS while travelling in remote parts of the country but had never seen anyone questioned about the technology.

Egyptian authorities have a notoriously testy relationship with new technology, having banned satellite dishes in the 1980s.

The Government has also struggled with the explosion of internet use, particularly blogging. In recent years a number of bloggers have been imprisoned because of what they have written, many of them charged with illegally criticising the president or inciting religious hatred.

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Earth Observatory: Port of Suez, Egypt

The Port of Suez is located in Egypt along the northern coastline of the Gulf of Suez. The port and city mark the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, which runs north-south through Egypt from the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Suez. The port serves vessels transporting general cargo, oil tankers, and both commercial and private passenger vessels. The port is also an important waypoint for Muslim pilgrims traveling to and from Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Several large vessels are visible in the Gulf of Suez and at various docks around the port.

An extensive petroleum refinery complex forms the southern coastal boundary of the Port of Suez. At the time this astronaut photograph was acquired, a smoke plume extended southwards into the Gulf of Suez—probably from a facility burning off gaseous byproducts of petroleum processing. Greenish blue regions offshore in the Gulf are most likely sediments stirred up by passage of ships. Similarly colored regions along the coastline are bottom sediments visible through the clear, shallow water.

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Babylon & Beyond: Triumph over sexual harassment

Sexual harassment may no more go unpunished in Egypt. In a landmark verdict this week, a Cairo court sentenced a truck driver to three years in prison for groping a woman.

The crime happened last summer when Sherif Gomaa Gibrial slowed his truck and reached out and grabbed Noha Roushdy's breast while she was walking near her home. Roushdy wouldn't let it pass. She ran and and grabbed onto the truck, forcing Gibrial to stop.

By insisting on taking her harasser to court, Roushy broke the silence and shame many Egyptian women and tourists face when they confront profanities and assaults. In a patriarchal society, where the blame for sexual harassment is squarely put on the victim, harassed women prefer to remain discreet. However, Roushdy's insistence on justice and her cause celebre case may change such attitudes.

Sexual harassment is deemed one of Egypt's most insidious crimes.According to a report issued last summer by some local women's advocacy group, 83% of Egyptian women have been exposed to sexual harassment. Feminists have been complaining that there is no strict legal code to fight the phenomenon.

"This verdict will make young men think a thousand times before committing sexual harassment," said Roushdy.

The 27-year-old documentary director decided not to hide from society; on the contrary, she was brave enough to appear in court and have her photo taken by different news organizations.

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo

Photo: Roushdy in court (al-Masry al-Youm/ Mohamed Hossam Eddin)

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Babylon & Beyond: Hey, you're not dying!

The man pictured on the cigarette pack appears to be dying.

He’s breathing through an oxygen mask, a wheezing testament to the ills of tobacco.

Only the man is not sick: He’s Hamdy Balala, an Egyptian driver for an ad company who finds himself the unwitting icon of a lawsuit.

Khaled Shaaban, a lawyer, says Balala’s posed picture, stamped on cigarette packs across the country, has duped and frightened the public.

Shaaban has sued Egyptian Health Minister Hatem El-Gabali for trickery. He wants the minister to resign. That’s not likely. Egypt has among the highest percentages of smokers in the world — 60% of adult males light up daily.

But Shaaban is passionate: “The simplest thing we want to see in an authority figure is credibility,” he told Egypt Today magazine. “If he deceived the public then he will never be credible, and he will never gain the public’s trust in any of his actions.”

The drama has become farce, especially for Balala, a heavy smoker with no health problems, who wanted to earn extra money posing for a public service advertisement. Now he’s teased by friends. Strangers accost him on the street.

He stopped talking to reporters after a picture surfaced on Facebook showing Balala smoking while holding up a cigarette pack with his hospitalized image.

Ah, the strange things that can happen when a noble idea gets marketed.

— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

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Yann Arthus-Bertrand: Earth From Above

Road interrupted by a sand dune, Nile Valley, Egypt. Dunes cover nearly one-third of the Sahara, and the highest, in linear form, can attain a height of almost 1,000 feet (300 m). Barchans are mobile, crescent-shaped dunes that move in the direction of the prevailing wind at rates as high as 33 feet (10 m) per year, sometimes even covering infrastructures such as this road in the Nile Valley. [map] (© Yann Arthus-Bertrand)

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Earth at Night
Credit: C. Mayhew & R. Simmon (NASA/GSFC), NOAA/NGDC, DMSP Digital Archive

Explanation: This is what the Earth looks like at night. Can you find your favorite country or city? Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made lights highlight particularly developed or populated areas of the Earth's surface, including the seaboards of Europe, the eastern United States, and Japan. Many large cities are located near rivers or oceans so that they can exchange goods cheaply by boat. Particularly dark areas include the central parts of South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Theabove image is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites.

My Brother

My brother Craig in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

He has been serving aboard the Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Mercy. From Navy NewsStand:

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (Aug. 11, 2008) The Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) anchored off the coast of Papua New Guinea in support of Pacific Partnership 2008. Pacific Partnership is a four-month humanitarian mission to Southeast Asia intended to build collaborative partnerships by providing engineering, civic, medical and dental assistance to the region.

PRAVDA: Russian woman put on trial in Dubai for drinking juice in public

A 28-year-old Russian female, who visited Dubai on a tourist visa, and a 30-year-old male citizen of Lebanon, a salesman in a local store, were put on trial for drinking juice in a public place in the daytime during Muslim fasting.

The police caught the two people red-handed at a gas station in Dubai,Emirat.ru reports with reference to Gulf News.

In accordance with the Federal Penal Code of the United Arab Emirates, a public intake of food and beverages during daytime hours of the month of Ramadan is forbidden by Article 313. The article stipulates the punishment in the form of either a monetary penalty – up to 2,000 dirhems ($555) – or even a term of up to one month in prison.

The young people told the court that they were not Muslims and were thus unaware of the fact that their actions could be punishable.

The court took the mitigating circumstances into consideration, but found the defendants guilty, since ignorance did not exclude responsibility. The court ruled that the young people must pay the fine of 1,000 dirhems ($278) each.

The case became the first one in Dubai in violation of Article 313 since the beginning of the month of Ramadan on September 1.

Thousands of foreigners from Europe and Asia reside in the emirate of Dubai, the major tourist center of the Persian Gulf . Dubai is known as a relatively liberal region in comparison with other territories of the UAE. Tourists can be seen in the streets wearing shorts, whereas alcoholic beverages can often be available in bars and hotels.

This year, however, the authorities intend to remind all residents and guests of the emirate that they are staying on the territory of a Muslim country. There have been quite a number of incidents recently when the local police in plain clothes arrested women sunbathing topless, nudists and other violators of public order.

Many tourists acknowledge that that they do not always understand how they should behave in Dubai.

Guide-books advise tourists should always carry their IDs, or better their copies, with them for the majority of police officers wear plain clothes and can be rather meticulous in their inspections.

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EO Natural Hazards: Dust Storm off Egypt

Click here to view high-resolution version (2.08MB) 

A thick plume of dust blew off the northern coast of Egypt, west of the Nile Delta, and over the Mediterranean Sea on September 25, 2008. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aquasatellite captured this image the same day. In this image, the dust swirls in a counter-clockwise direction toward the northwest. A thinner plume in the east mimics the motion of the larger, thicker plume. Source points for this dust storm are not apparent in this image, but the dust likely arose from the sand seas farther inland in Egypt and/or Libya.

NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.

Dust & Smoke: Topic Home | Archive | Related Links 

Natural Hazards Home

Dust Storm

We are having a bit of a dust storm today, it's not that bad but we're experiencing a very dry hot wind today and we can see a few clouds of dust blowing around. 

Burger King in Cairo

I'm Loving It! Wait, that's not right.

Stephanie and Hunter

IHT: Talks still ongoing to free hostages in Egypt

CAIRO: The kidnappers of 11 European tourists and 8 Egyptians who were taken in a remote desert area of southwestern Egypt on Friday night have demanded $6 million to free them, an Egyptian government official said early Tuesday. Negotiations were under way, said the official, Magdy Radi, a cabinet spokesman.

The tourism group was ambushed by armed masked men while driving off-road vehicles in a rugged, remote area called Kark Talh, government officials said. Five Italians, five Germans and a Romanian were in the group, along with an Egyptian police officer, four Egyptian drivers, two Egyptian tour guides and the managing director of the tour company, the government said. Egypt's Ministry of Tourism said that the kidnappers drove toward the border with Sudan.

The ministry said in a statement that the tour company's managing director phoned his wife, and ANSA, the Italian news agency, reported that the ministry said she was negotiating with the kidnappers. The owner of the company, Aegyptus, was identified by ANSA as Ibrahim Abdelrahim, and his wife as Kristen Butterwick-Abdelrahim.

In New York on Monday afternoon, Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said the hostages had all been freed, according to Reuters. He spoke on the eve of the opening of the United Nations General Assembly.

But Radi said that his information was wrong. "They have not been released yet, " he said. "The negotiations are still going on."

News that tourists were kidnapped in Upper Egypt, which was once a hotbed of radical Islamic terrorism, at first raised fears of a potentially crippling blow to tourism, one of the main pillars of the Egyptian economy.

Egyptian officials disclosed the kidnapping only on Monday, after it was discussed by Italian officials in Rome. But once it was made public, officials here sought to underscore that the victims were in a remote area closer to Sudan that any major Egyptian city and that it was a "mobsterlike" criminal attack and not one carried out by religious-inspired radicals.

The kidnapping occurred in the New Valley governate, the least densely populated region of Egypt. It is primarily known for its dates, sweetened in the desert sun, and desert safaris.

"At this point in time, there are no indications whatsoever that this incident is linked to any organized act of terror," the Ministry of Tourism said in a statement.

Diaa Rashwan, an expert in radical Islamic movements at the state's chief research center, the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, agreed with the assessment.

"Talking about ransom is not in line with the method of Muslim extremists," he said. "They generally kill or make conditions that are very difficult to achieve."

Nevertheless, the kidnappings come at a time of crisis for Egypt. The nation is suffering severe inflation — especially for food staples — and a seemingly endless series of strikes among state workers. Its upper house of Parliament was recently gutted in a fire that rescue workers could not control for hours. Two weeks ago, more than 100 people were killed in a rockslide that crushed a neighborhood east of Cairo.

"Any event like this is extremely harmful to the Egyptian economy," said Samir Tobar, an economist at Zagazig University in the Nile Delta north of Cairo. "These people cannot possibly love their country. Egypt gets more than $3 billion a year from tourism."

Rachel Donadio contributed reporting from Rome.

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Some Old Pictures

We took these pictures last year but never posted them. And as I'm bored to tears just now it is giving me something to do.

Left, the drinking water delivery man with his 1.5 horse powered water cart down the road from our house. Right, a family of 5 (look close under Moms shaw) out for a spin.

The Ring Road is the main artery from outside the city and in these two pictures there is very little traffic as it's just 0645 but in another 20 minutes it will be packed. In the left picture you can see someone running across the 8 lanes of traffic and people hanging out of the mini bus and it the right picture you can see everyone queueing for the next one. You may also be able to see the early morning smog as we are driving into the city.

The Associated Press: Tourist bus crashes in Egypt, killing 12

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Twelve people have been killed in a collision between a delivery truck and a bus carrying European and Russian tourists in Egypt's Sinai peninsula. Another 37 are wounded.

The dead include seven tourists from the Netherlands, Russia and Ukraine, and five Egyptians. The head of emergency services for south Sinai says an exact breakdown of nationalities is not yet available.

Monday's crash occurred near the Red Sea resort town of Ras Sadr.

Egypt has a history of serious crashes because of speeding and poor road conditions. At least 8,000 people were killed in 2006 accidents.

via

Doortje is back from Holland

And she came bearing gifts.  2, count them, 2 1 Terabyte external hard drives.  Does this girl love me or what?

Updating My Mishap

I went back to hospital today and the doctor had a look at the stitching on my ear and the bruising to my skull behind my ear and is pleased with the way both are coming along, and my stitches are already starting to fall out. While the ear was the biggest drama as it's such a delicate area and so was bleeding quite a lot they were more worried that I may have a hemorrhage as the ridge from just below my ear to half the way up my skull was rather large. But it appears that I'm healing ok and while I still can't swim I can take a shower and wash my hair which is something. And Doortje is bringing a helmet back from Holland for me as well. After looking me over the doctor asked me how the bike made out after my fall and he had a good laugh when I told him 'my wife took it away', no matter where we go in the world men always laugh about the same things.

I suppose I'd better wash the blood off my bike before Doortje sees it and really does take it away.

The New York Times: 9/11 Rumors That Become Conventional Wisdom

CAIRO — Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom here that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too.

This is not the conclusion of a scientific survey, but it is what routinely comes up in conversations around the region — in a shopping mall in Dubai, in a park in Algiers, in a cafe in Riyadh and all over Cairo.

“Look, I don’t believe what your governments and press say. It just can’t be true,” said Ahmed Issab, 26, a Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. “Why would they tell the truth? I think the U.S. organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil.”

It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre. But that would miss a point that people in this part of the world think Western leaders, especially in Washington, need to understand: That such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism — the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.

“The United States should be concerned because in order to tell people that there is a real evil, they too have to believe it in order to help you,” said Mushairy al-Thaidy, a columnist in the Saudi-owned regional newspaper Asharq al Awsat. “Otherwise, it will diminish your ability to fight terrorism. It is not the kind of battle you can fight on your own; it is a collective battle.”

There were many reasons people here said they believed that the attacks of 9/11 were part of a conspiracy against Muslims. Some had nothing to do with Western actions, and some had everything to do with Western policies.

Again and again, people said they simply did not believe that a group of Arabs — like themselves — could possibly have waged such a successful operation against a superpower like the United States. But they also said that Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policy proved that the United States and Israel were behind the attacks, especially with the invasion of Iraq.

“Maybe people who executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, 36, a clothing-store owner in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. “It was organized by other people, the United States or the Israelis.”

The rumors that spread shortly after 9/11 have been passed on so often that people no longer know where or when they first heard them. At this point, they have heard them so often, even on television, that they think they must be true.

First among these is that Jews did not go to work at the World Trade Center on that day. Asked how Jews might have been notified to stay home, or how they kept it a secret from co-workers, people here wave off the questions because they clash with their bedrock conviction that Jews are behind many of their troubles and that Western Jews will go to any length to protect Israel.

“Why is it that on 9/11, the Jews didn’t go to work in the building,” said Ahmed Saied, 25, who works in Cairo as a driver for a lawyer. “Everybody knows this. I saw it on TV, and a lot of people talk about this.”

Zein al-Abdin, 42, an electrician, who was drinking tea and chain-smoking cheap Cleopatra cigarettes in Al Shahat, a cafe in Bulaq, grew more and more animated as he laid out his thinking about what happened on Sept. 11.

“What matters is we think it was an attack against Arabs,” he said of the passenger planes crashing into American targets. “Why is it that they never caught him, bin Laden? How can they not know where he is when they know everything? They don’t catch him because he hasn’t done it. What happened in Iraq confirms that it has nothing to do with bin Laden or Qaeda. They went against Arabs and against Islam to serve Israel, that’s why.”

There is a reason so many people here talk with casual certainty — and no embarrassment — about the United States attacking itself to have a reason to go after Arabs and help Israel. It is a reflection of how they view government leaders, not just in Washington, but here in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. They do not believe them. The state-owned media are also distrusted. Therefore, they think that if the government is insisting that bin Laden was behind it, he must not have been.

“Mubarak says whatever the Americans want him to say, and he’s lying for them, of course,” Mr. Ibrahim said of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president.

Americans might better understand the region, experts here said, if they simply listen to what people are saying — and try to understand why — rather than taking offense. The broad view here is that even before Sept. 11, the United States was not a fair broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that it then capitalized on the attacks to buttress Israel and undermine the Muslim Arab world.

The single greatest proof, in most people’s eyes, was the invasion of Iraq. Trying to convince people here that it was not a quest for oil or a war on Muslims is like convincing many Americans that it was, and that the 9/11 attacks were the first step.

“It is the result of widespread mistrust, and the belief among Arabs and Muslims that the United States has a prejudice against them,” said Wahid Abdel Meguid, deputy director of the government-financed Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, the nation’s premier research center. “So they never think the United States is well intentioned, and they always feel that whatever it does has something behind it.”

Hisham Abbas, 22, studies tourism at Cairo University and hopes one day to work with foreigners for a living. But he does not give it a second thought when asked about Sept. 11. He said it made no sense at all that Mr. bin Laden could have carried out such an attack from Afghanistan. And like everyone else interviewed, he saw the events of the last seven years as proof positive that it was all a United States plan to go after Muslims.

“There are Arabs who hate America, a lot of them, but this is too much,” Mr. Abbas said as he fidgeted with his cellphone. “And look at what happened after this — the Americans invaded two Muslim countries. They used 9/11 as an excuse and went to Iraq. They killed Saddam, tortured people. How can you trust them?”

Nadim Audi contributed reporting.

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Ouch

I came off my bike again, this time it was a bit more serious. I cracked my head against the corner of a concrete wall and knocked off a small piece of my ear. As luck would have have it just as I got home, dripping blood all over myself, our friends and neighbours where just leaving for a check up at a private hospital as they are having a baby next week so they kindly dragged me along and they helped me get sorted out and sewn back up.

sciencedaily.com: Scientists Discover Why Flies Are So Hard To Swat

ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2008) — Over the past two decades, Michael Dickinson has been interviewed by reporters hundreds of times about his research on the biomechanics of insect flight. One question from the press has always dogged him: Why are flies so hard to swat?

"Now I can finally answer," says Dickinson, the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Using high-resolution, high-speed digital imaging of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) faced with a looming swatter, Dickinson and graduate student Gwyneth Card have determined the secret to a fly's evasive maneuvering. Long before the fly leaps, its tiny brain calculates the location of the impending threat, comes up with an escape plan, and places its legs in an optimal position to hop out of the way in the opposite direction. All of this action takes place within about 100 milliseconds after the fly first spots the swatter.

"This illustrates how rapidly the fly's brain can process sensory information into an appropriate motor response," Dickinson says.

For example, the videos showed that if the descending swatter--actually, a 14-centimeter-diameter black disk, dropping at a 50-degree angle toward a fly standing at the center of a small platform--comes from in front of the fly, the fly moves its middle legs forward and leans back, then raises and extends its legs to push off backward. When the threat comes from the back, however, the fly (which has a nearly 360-degree field of view and can see behind itself) moves its middle legs a tiny bit backwards. With a threat from the side, the fly keeps its middle legs stationary, but leans its whole body in the opposite direction before it jumps.

"We also found that when the fly makes planning movements prior to take-off, it takes into account its body position at the time it first sees the threat," Dickinson says. "When it first notices an approaching threat, a fly's body might be in any sort of posture depending on what it was doing at the time, like grooming, feeding, walking, or courting. Our experiments showed that the fly somehow 'knows' whether it needs to make large or small postural changes to reach the correct preflight posture. This means that the fly must integrate visual information from its eyes, which tell it where the threat is approaching from, with mechanosensory information from its legs, which tells it how to move to reach the proper preflight pose."

The results offer new insight into the fly nervous system, and suggest that within the fly brain there is a map in which the position of the looming threat "is transformed into an appropriate pattern of leg and body motion prior to take off," Dickinson says. "This is a rather sophisticated sensory-to-motor transformation and the search is on to find the place in the brain where this happens," he says.

Dickinson's research also suggests an optimal method for actually swatting a fly. "It is best not to swat at the fly's starting position, but rather to aim a bit forward of that to anticipate where the fly is going to jump when it first sees your swatter," he says.

The paper, "Visually Mediated Motor Planning in the Escape Response of Drosophila," will be published August 28 in the journal Current Biology.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

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WSJ.com: CIA Curtails Contract With U.S. Security Firm in Iraq

One of the companies I use to work for is in the news:

MVM Inc., one of the biggest security contractors used by U.S. intelligence agencies, has lost the bulk of a Central Intelligence Agency contract in Iraq after failing to provide enough armed guards, according to company emails and contractors familiar with the decision.

The loss of the CIA contract, which was potentially worth more than $1 billion over five years, is a big blow to closely held MVM, based in Vienna, Va. Overseas work for U.S. intelligence agencies represents a third of the company's $200 million in annual revenue and is believed to be one of the fastest-growing areas of the contracting business.

Intelligence officers needing protective services are likely to remain in Iraq even after U.S. troops leave, so demand for such services will continue or possibly increase. The CIA's largest foreign station is in Baghdad, with hundreds of officers estimated to be based there. The loss of the contract will likely hurt MVM's chances of winning further work with the agency.

"We are disappointed to announce that the client has not chosen MVM Inc.," Rob Whitfield, who manages MVM's CIA work, wrote to the company's pool of guards on Aug. 22, according to a copy of the email viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

MVM declined to respond to specific questions. In a written statement, the company said it has an "outstanding performance history" working in dangerous regions and it has never failed to "secure any personnel or facilities that we have been contracted to protect." The company also said that it is "fully compliant with all of the contractual obligations of our diverse client base."

A CIA spokesman said the agency doesn't comment on contracting decisions.

MVM's performance on the CIA contract, known as Panther, was the subject of a Page One article in the Journal last month. The article also discussed alleged problems with a related National Security Agency contract, dubbed Scorpion, which provides guards for NSA employees overseas.

The article detailed allegations from a former MVM guard who said his teammates fabricated an after-action report about a November 2004 shooting incident to cover up their errors. Other contractors detailed problems in areas such as staffing and equipment.

In the article, MVM Chief Executive Dario Marquez said the government had been satisfied with MVM's work. "We have a great working relationship with both these clients," he said in an interview for the article, referring to the CIA and NSA.

The NSA has begun probing the allegations, according to a former MVM manager familiar with the inquiry, including sending an official to Baghdad last month to interview contractors employed by MVM at the time. An NSA spokesman said the agency had no information to provide on the inquiry or the contract.

The CIA's Panther contract with MVM was to protect CIA officers in Iraq. MVM will retain a small portion responsible for guarding CIA facilities and will continue to provide a handful of mobile guards at two sites whose locations are classified, but which aren't in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan, according to Mr. Whitfield's email.

The CIA awarded the more profitable work-protecting officers traveling around the country to a Nevada company, SOC Inc. SOC has been providing logistical support such as food services and electricity to the CIA in war zones.

SOC didn't respond to requests for comment.

The U.S. relies on contractors throughout the intelligence community, though few are sent overseas. According to a recent report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, about 5% of the estimated 37,000 contracted intelligence personnel work overseas.

Overall, about 70% of the total intelligence budget, including electricity, is outsourced; some 27% of the total amount is spent on people doing core work, such as those with specific skills such as languages.

According to several former MVM managers, MVM was regularly 10 to 15 guards short of the 100 or so it promised. The lack of guards required the agency to postpone missions, one former manager said.

Guards working on Panther were frustrated with MVM's management and pay and many decided to sign on with SOC, which promised $715 a day, compared with $630 MVM offered, according to a contractor familiar with the situation.

MVM's Mr. Whitfield said in the email that the company "would have provided the most positive working environment for the independent contractors in the field."

MVM plans to pursue "other opportunities" with CIA, Mr. Whitfield added.

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The Associated Press: Egypt parliament fire fuels scorn of government

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — A fire that gutted the upper house of parliament this week has fueled Egyptians' scorn for their authoritarian government, with critics saying it is unable to protect its own buildings and maintain basic infrastructure.

Firefighters appeared ineffectual Tuesday as they battled the blaze raging through the top floors of the 19th-century palace that houses the Shoura Council. Dozens of fire trucks rushed to the scene, but at least in the early hours, only a few sprayed water on it. Firefighters mainly stayed outside, while the flames spread and ravaged the interior.

Army helicopters dropped buckets of water from the nearby Nile River, but were seen to often miss the building. They did get enough water on it to collapse part of the roof, with little effect on the fire. It took 18 hours to extinguish the blaze.

One firefighter was killed and a dozen were injured.

Interior Minister Habib el-Adly ruled out arson or terrorism. Initial reports said the blaze was sparked by a short-circuit in an air conditioning unit. The fire recalled a string of past accidents that were thought to have been caused or exacerbated by negligence.

In 2006, a ferry crossing the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia sank, killing more than 1,000 Egyptians. A parliamentary investigation found the ferry had been allowed to operate while failing to meet minimum safety requirements and both the company and government were criticized for failing to respond quickly to the sinking.

The acquittal of the ferry's owner on negligence charges last month raised an outcry that authorities were protecting the wealthy businessman.

In 2002, a fire destroyed a train in southern Egypt, killing 370 people, mostly poor passengers in third-class cars, and there have been several deadly train collisions since.

"It's the same confusion, the same accusations (of negligence) and the same denial," columnist Magdy el-Galad wrote Thursday in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, comparing the parliament blaze to the earlier disasters.

Ibrahim Eissa, editor of opposition Al-Dustour daily, criticized the "deterioration of our system, which has become incapable of protecting even its buildings from fire and disasters." The opposition Al-Wafd daily called for those responsible for the fire to be put on trial.

The government of President Hosni Mubarak has already faced discontent this year with a series of labor strikes and riots over shortages of subsidized bread, a staple of Egypt's largely impoverished population. Fights in long bread lines caused several deaths.

The fire gutted the interiors of the top two floors of the palace, destroying Islamic decorations and the main hall where the Shoura Council holds its sessions. The hall holds great symbolic weight for Egyptians because it was the scene of the 1881 trial of nationalist hero Ahmed Urabi and the signing of the first constitution in 1923.

Media reports have focused on poor training of firefighters and the absence of sprinklers or a fire management plan for the building. Those features are rare throughout Egypt, where safety rules are nonexistent or lax. Few buildings in Cairo even have smoke alarms.

Sami Mahran, parliament's secretary-general, said the building did have fire alarms, which went off, and "parliament's internal fire department hurried to control it." He and other officials told The Associated Press the fire moved quickly, fed by the wooden paneling and ceilings, many carpets and a new paint job.

Egyptians are widely skeptical of parliament, which is seen as a rubber stamp for Mubarak's government. And unlike earlier deadly disasters, few Egyptians seemed to mourn the destruction.

"I'm just sorry parliament wasn't in session," one man told The Associated Press Tuesday night as he watched the blaze, refusing to give his name for fear of trouble with authorities.

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lifeinthefastlane.ca: 10 Most Incredible Ancient Oases in the World

Bahariya Oasis

El-Waha, el-Bahariya, or Bahariya (meaning the “northern oasis”) is an oasis in Egypt about 300 miles (500 kilometers) from Cairo, set in the lowest point in Egypt in a depression covering over 1250 sq. miles (2000 sq. kilometers), and the least technologically advanced Oasis in the country.

The Bahariya Oasis and much of today’s Libyan Desert was once the floor of an immense ocean, but since approximately 3,000 BC to now, very little rainfall graces the area, so groundwater is its life blood.

Most of the villages and cultivated land can be seen from the top of the 165 foot (50 meter) high Jebel al-Mi’ysrah, along with the massive dunes which threaten to engulf some of the older settlements.

Link to the other 9 Most Incredible Ancient Oases in the World.

pinke.biz: The Worst Gay Travel Destinations in the World

4. Egypt

Who wouldn’t want to go to Egypt? It’s got the relics of the most advanced civilization in ancient times, the Pyramids, the Nile and of course Cairo. Plus you can really get that authentic Egyptian experience by getting arrested and thrown in jail for being a homosexual. Bonus points and extra jail time if you’re HIV+! Unless jail, after a beating from the notoriously violent local police force of course, sounds like fun for the whole family for you then it’d be best to keep as far away as possible from Egypt as you can. The US State department has issued several official warnings about gay tourists traveling to the country –as they have about all the countries on this list incidentally- and Egypt has been busy recently tossing HIV+ citizens in jail with only the merest hint of a trial for the past few months. It’s ok though, several years in jail oughta teach them not to get AIDS or be gay. As every prison movie tells us, jail is the best place to go to avoid any type of homosexuality. That and the Navy. All kidding aside, do not go around announcing your sexuality in Egypt. Yes, there are gay bars in Cairo. That does not mean homosexuality is tolerated. Be very careful.

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One Year

It's our 'anniversary' as we arrived in Cairo one year ago today. But I don't think we're going to stick out another.

A bit of an update: Today I was out washing the previous months accumulation of dirt and dust off the garden furniture with Nabil (our gardener) and Hanan (our cleaning lady) and mentioned that today is our anniversary which they both said "Hababababad". At least Hanan did as she doesn't speak english and it sounded like "hababababad" to me with my keen grasp of Arabic. Nabil, who speaks quite good english said "congratulations" and all that, I wasn't expecting anything more than that really, I was just making my usual noises as we were turning the last months dirt and dust into todays mud. But this evening the doorbell rang as we were finishing dinner and Hanan was at the door, with a cake for us. We were a bit taken aback as it was almost 2000 and she had to have walked home after she finished work at another house she does in the afternoons, fed her family, gone to the baker and walked all the way back to our house with this quite nice cake to congratulate us. We just thought that was nice of her. And it makes me more than a little embarrassed about all the bitching and moaning I do about this place.

Michael Poliza Photography

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Omar's Travel Impressions: Turkey and Switzerland--an unlikely combination

My uncle has joined blogspot and posted his and my aunts latest adventure:

We checked in and at 6 PM attended the Road Scholar welcome. Our guide was Sami, who talked a lot, said most things two or three times, and only occasionally mispronounced a word. I had a glass of the local wine, which tasted much like ouzo, and gave quite a kick. We socialized with the others (seven other couples); I had brought my book along, but Sami didn’t believe in introductory introductions, let alone name badges, so I put it in my belt. During his talk, Sami explained that no one in Turkey drank the tap water; there were so many chemicals in the water that it tasted very bad. He said there were about 1.25 lira per dollar and that we would need lira to buy water, wine, beer, etc. Liquor and gas were taxed very high; petrol was the most expensive in the world.

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Alpha

Our compounds guard dog.

BBC News: Kicking Yemen's qat habit

Chewing qat leaves is bad for Yemen's economy and public health, says its government. But, as Stephanie Hancock found, curbing this national pastime is an uphill task.

I had only been in the country a few minutes when I noticed a man with a gigantic growth bulging out of his cheek. The swelling was enormous, it was so bulbous it practically had its own heartbeat.

Qat chewing is a national pastime for the people of Yemen

Now I have been brought up not to stare but, feeling slightly guilty, I kept sneaking glances at this unfortunate fellow.

What an awful disease, I thought to myself and how nice that other people are not staring at him, unlike me.

I wondered whether the growth might be a tumour, or perhaps some sort of thyroid problem.

I did not want to seem rude but I quietly asked my guide, Ahmed, if perhaps this man was ill.

Ahmed, in his nonchalant manner, turned to look at the man, and gave a small laugh that suggested I was very stupid.

"Ha! That's qat," he said.

And so it was that I discovered the substance that makes Yemen tick.

Qat is a flowering plant that grows all over the Arabian peninsula, and when you chew the leaves it acts as a mild stimulant. The habit is known as qat chewing, but this is a misnomer as the teeth are not actually really involved.

The aim appears to be to stuff as many leaves as you can possibly fit into one cheek, until you resemble a lop-sided hamster, and then sort of suck on the juices.

After a while a green foamy paste forms at your lips, and at this point, conversation is now impossible. Any important information must be communicated via grunting and pointing.

To say qat is popular in Yemen would be a massive under-statement, practically everybody in this country chews qat, two thirds of men and a third of women.

It is not elitist either, everyone from businessmen to street urchins like to indulge. Apart from a few hard-core fans, most people seem to start up after lunch, and the chewing will often go on late into the night.

Relaxation aid

Some people chew to give them energy to work others use it for relaxation. It is a common sight here to see men flaked out on pavements, gazing absent mindedly into the distance, giving total concentration to the chewing task at hand.

Qat is an integral part of life here in Yemen, but these days the government is becoming concerned about its effects and this week sounded alarm bells about qat's grip on the country.

The man behind the warning is Yemen's planning minister Abdulkarim al-Arhabi. I went to meet him in his office, where he patiently explained all the many ills qat is responsible for.

For starters, there are the health effects such as mouth cancer, he said, which is on the rise because farmers are using more insecticide.

Farmers are also now choosing to grow water-thirsty qat instead of food crops, he said, because it consistently fetches high prices.

Economic drain

The result is a major drain on water in a country suffering drought and a growing reliance on foreign food imports at a time when staple goods are more expensive than ever.

Then there is the effect on productivity, he added, with all those young people sitting around chewing qat when they could be working.

Critics of the government point out that one in three Yemenis is unemployed and chewing qat is a simple way to pass the day and keeps them away from alcohol and harder drugs.

Later I went for a look round Sanaa's lively qat market, and it is amazing to see how much money changes hands, especially for the high quality blends which can cost up to £10 a bag, and that will only last you one afternoon.

It made me realise that qat is a big part of the economy here.

My guide Ahmed, whose mood was always intimately linked to the size of the bulge in his cheek, is suspicious of the government's fighting talk over qat. "The government needs qat," he told me with a mouthful of green leaves. "It says it wants to stop it, but it earns lots of money from all the taxes farmers pay.

"Besides," he added, his voice dropping to a gurgled whisper, "when people are chewing qat, they don't ask awkward questions about where Yemen's oil revenues are going."

Nobody knows what would happen if qat was taken away

And with this he hit the nail firmly on the head. Yemen has recently suffered from riots, when angry young men, unable to find work, rose up against the government.

Poverty and corruption, a faltering economy and unemployment all linked and all related in some way back to qat.

It might be causing problems for this country, but nobody is quite sure what would happen if you took qat away.

As one trader told me as he hawked his goods for sale in the market: "Qat is the key to peace in Yemen. Nobody would be stupid enough to meddle with that."

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guardian.co.uk: Illegal filesharing: A suicide note from the music industry

Cory Doctorow wrote in the Guardian about the insanity of the latest record-company salvo in the copyright wars, a cozy deal with British ISPs that will have them spying on and degrading the connections of subscribers accused of infringing downloading:

So no, I don't think this is going to have any appreciable effect on filesharing. However, it will succeed in driving music-swapping even further underground, to encrypted protocols and offline hard-drive parties and private swapping networks. These are every bit as efficient at getting music into the hands of kids, but they're a lot harder to monitor and charge money for.

The original Napster had a fine proposition: they would charge their users for signing onto their network and write a cheque for as-many-billions-as-you-like to the record industry every quarter. After all, they had the fastest-growing technology in the history of the world at their disposal, 70 million internet users in 18 months, and they'd found that the average American user was willing to spend $15 a month for the service. The record industry sued them into a smoking hole instead, and out of the ashes of Napster arose dozens of new networking technologies. Each one was more hardened against monitoring and disconnection than the last.

These days, if you wanted to charge a flat fee for access to all music (something that consumers all over the world would be eager to accept), you'd have to do stuff that's a lot more complicated and funky to get anything like the clean reports we'd have gotten off of Napster 1.0.

And yet that's just what we're going to end up doing. It's historically inevitable: whenever technology makes it impossible to police a class of copyright use, we've solved the problem by creating blanket licences.

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Ahmos

Our neighbour with his new Volkswagen. Nice car.

The Jerusalem Post: 62% of Egyptian men regularly harass women

Almost two-thirds of Egyptian men harass women and believe their victims bring it on themselves when they wear tight and revealing clothes, according to a study released over the weekend by the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights in Cairo.

The study, titled "Clouds in Egypt's Sky," was released as part of the group's "Making our Streets Safer for Everyone" campaign launched in 2006.

Egypt has yet to initiate a serious legal struggle against sexual violence. Some 20,000 rape cases were reported in 2006, according to a report published by the Egyptian National Center for Criminal and Social Research last year.

Half of local and foreign women surveyed were sexually harassed in some way, according to the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights study. Ninety-eight percent of the foreign women, who visited Egypt for tourist, educational and professional reasons, said they experienced sexual harassment during their stay.

Furthermore, 88% of respondents, women and men, had witnessed an incident involving sexual harassment.

Of the Egyptians men surveyed, 62.4% said they had perpetrated and/or "continue to perpetrate" harassment of women.

The sexual harassment committed by Egyptian men included touching without permission, staring, making insulting sexual comments and exposing their genitals to women.

Fifty-three percent of the male respondents said women were to blame for sexual harassment because they enjoyed it and because they dressed in revealing clothing. Most women who were harassed did not file a complaint with the police and most incidents took place in the street, public transportation or tourist sites.

According to the study, most Egyptians believe sexual harassment is a growing problem due to the deteriorating economy, a lack of awareness and the weakening of religious values.

The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights was founded in 1996 by six women in Cairo's Dar el-Salaam neighborhood to provide poor women with legal aid and to promote women's legal and political rights.

In March, the center launched a "Million Signatures Campaign" in support of strengthened legislation criminalizing sexual harassment.

"The stories we collected from women about their experiences with harassment confirmed our fears that the worsening of this phenomenon has led to psychological effects as well as a decrease in women's willingness to go into the streets and participate in political and public life," the center said in a statement.

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It's Mango Season

A couple of pictures of Nabil our gardener picking mangos. Think it's a good time to reread An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof as she has some nice recipes in her book.

Going for a Swim

Today was a holiday here in Egypt so we spent the day in the pool. It's a tough life here in Cairo...

The Dogs

Jinx in his garden and Aliaan 'laying out' by the pool.

New Camera!

I bought a Canon EOS 450D on my way though Schiphol when coming back from Estonia. That is why you will see a spat of pictures on the blog, just having a go with it.

The New York Times: Mideast Facing Choice Between Crops and Water

CAIRO — Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.

For decades nations in this region have drained aquifers, sucked the salt from seawater and diverted the mighty Nile to make the deserts bloom. But those projects were so costly and used so much water that it remained far more practical to import food than to produce it. Today, some countries import 90 percent or more of their staples.

Now, the worldwide food crisis is making many countries in this politically volatile region rethink that math.

The population of the region has more than quadrupled since 1950, to 364 million, and is expected to reach nearly 600 million by 2050. By that time, the amount of fresh water available for each person, already scarce, will be cut in half, and declining resources could inflame political tensions further.

“The countries of the region are caught between the hammer of rising food prices and the anvil of steadily declining water availability per capita,” Alan R. Richards, a professor of economics and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said via e-mail. “There is no simple solution.”

Losing confidence in world markets, these nations are turning anew to expensive schemes to maintain their food supply.

Djibouti is growing rice in solar-powered greenhouses, fed by groundwater and cooled with seawater, in a project that produces what the World Bank economist Ruslan Yemtsov calls “probably the most expensive rice on earth.”

Several oil-rich nations, including Saudi Arabia, have started searching for farmland in fertile but politically unstable countries like Pakistan and Sudan, with the goal of growing crops to be shipped home.

“These countries have the land and the water,” said Hassan S. Sharaf Al Hussaini, an official in Bahrain’s agriculture ministry. “We have the money.”

In Egypt, where a shortage of subsidized bread led to rioting in April, government officials say they are looking into growing wheat on two million acres straddling the border with Sudan.

Economists and development experts say that nutritional self-sufficiency in this part of the world presents challenges that are not easily overcome. Saudi Arabia tapped aquifers to become self-sufficient in wheat production in the 1980s. By the early 1990s, the kingdom had become a major exporter. This year, however, the Saudis said they would phase out the program because it used too much water.

“You can bring in money and water and you can make the desert green until either the water runs out or the money,” said Elie Elhadj, a Syrian-born author who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the topic.

Egypt, too, has for decades dreamed of converting huge swaths of desert into lush farmland. The most ambitious of these projects is in Toshka, a Sahara Desert oasis in a scorched lunar landscape of sand and rock outcroppings.

When the Toshka farm was started in 1997, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, compared its ambitions to building the pyramids, involving roughly 500,000 acres of farmland and tens of thousands of residents. But no one has moved there, and only 30,000 acres or so have been planted.

The farm’s manager, Mohamed Nagi Mohamed, says the Sahara is perfect for farming, as long as there is plenty of fertilizer and water. For one thing, the bugs cannot handle the summer heat, so pesticides are not needed.

“You can grow anything on this land,” he said, showing off fields of alfalfa and rows of tomatoes and grapes, shielded from the sun by gauzy white netting. “It’s a very nice project, but it needs a lot of money.”

Mr. Mubarak calls his country’s growing population an “urgent” problem that has exacerbated the food crisis. The population grows about 1.7 percent annually, considerably slower than a generation ago but still fast enough that it is on pace to double by 2050.

Adding 1.3 million Egyptians each year to the 77 million squeezed into an inhabited area roughly the size of Taiwan is a daunting prospect for a country in which 20 percent of citizens already live in poverty.

One recent morning in the Cairo slum of Imbaba, people crammed in front of a weathered green bakery shack for their daily rations of subsidized bread, a pita-like loaf called baladi that sells for less than a penny, so cheap that some Egyptians feed it to their livestock.

The bakery shares the end of a dead-end street with a mountain of garbage, 25 feet by 5 feet, that looks as if it is moving because so many flies swarm over it.

“Most people are really suffering, but what can they do?” asked Mohamed Faruk, a 38-year-old grocery worker who moonlights as a bus inspector, as he carried nine loaves of baladi in newspaper.

Awatef Mahmud, a 53-year-old mother of five who sat on a nearby stoop waiting for her bread to cool, said higher prices had led to dietary changes for her family. “Instead of buying one kilo of meat every week, we buy a half a kilo,” she said. “People used to buy pasta to make for their kids. But now that it’s four and a half pounds,” she said, referring to the currency, “they give them bread instead.”

Economists say that rather than seeking to become self-sufficient with food, countries in this region should grow crops for which they have a competitive advantage, like produce or flowers, which do not require much water and can be exported for top dollar.

For example, Doron Ovits, a confident 39-year-old with sunglasses pushed over his forehead and a deep tan, runs a 150-acre tomato and pepper empire in the Negev Desert of Israel. His plants, grown in greenhouses with elaborate trellises and then exported to Europe, are irrigated with treated sewer water that he says is so pure he has to add minerals back. The water is pumped through drip irrigation lines covered tightly with black plastic to prevent evaporation.

A pumping station outside each greenhouse is equipped with a computer that tracks how much water and fertilizer is used; Mr. Ovits keeps tabs from his desktop computer.

“With drip irrigation, you save money. It’s more precise,” he said. “You can’t run it like a peasant, a farmer. You have to run it like a businessman.”

Israel is as obsessed with water as Mr. Ovits is. It was there, in the 1950s, that an engineer invented modern drip irrigation, which saves water and fertilizer by feeding it, drop by drop, to a plant’s roots. Since then, Israel has become the world’s leader in maximizing agricultural output per drop of water, and many believe that it serves as a viable model for other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Already, Tunisia has reinvigorated its agriculture sector by adopting some of the desert farming advances pioneered in Israel, and Egypt’s new desert farms now grow mostly water-sipping plants with drip irrigation.

The Israeli government strictly regulates how much water farmers can use and requires many of them to irrigate with treated sewer water, pumped to farms in purple pipes. It has also begun using a desalination plant to cleanse brackish water for irrigation.

“In the future, another 200 million cubic meters of marginal water are to be recycled, in addition to promoting the establishment of desalination plants,” Shalom Simhon, Israel’s agriculture minister, wrote via e-mail.

Still, four years of drought have created what Mr. Simhon calls “a deep water crisis,” forcing the country to cut farmers’ quotas.

Egypt, at least, has the Nile. Under a 1959 treaty, the country is entitled to a disproportionate share of the river’s water, a point that rankles some of its neighbors. It has built canals to bring Nile water to the Sinai Desert, to desert lands between Cairo and Alexandria and to the vast emptiness of Toshka.

For Saad Nassar, a top adviser in Egypt’s ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, the country has little choice but to try to make the desert bloom, even in unlikely places like Toshka, which it says will eventually succeed: all of Egypt’s farms and population are now crowded onto just 4 percent of its land.

“We don’t have the luxury of choosing this or that,” he said. “We have to work on every acre that is cultivatable.”

Egypt is establishing an estimated 200,000 acres of farmland in the desert each year, even as it loses 60,000 acres of its best farmland to urbanization, said Richard Tutwiler, director of the Desert Development Center at the American University in Cairo. “It’s sand,” he said, referring to the reclaimed desert land. “It’s not the world’s most fertile soil.”

As Cairo’s population has grown — to an estimated 12 million today — hastily constructed apartment buildings have sprouted among the fields. “They sow apartment buildings instead of wheat,” said Gideon Kruseman, a Dutch agriculture economist working with the government to improve farming there.

For more than 5,000 years, farmers have worked the land along the Nile and in the Nile Delta, the lotus-shaped plain north of Cairo where centuries of accumulated silt have produced a deep, rich layer of topsoil. They have endured drought, flood, locust and pestilence.

Now the scourge is development. For farmers like Magdy Abdel-Rahman, the new buildings not only ruin the rural tranquillity of his ancient fields, with the constant hammering and commotion, but they also reduce his yields.

“The shade is not good for the plants,” said Mr. Abdel-Rahman, who farms corn and clover on a half-acre lot 20 miles from downtown Cairo.

Five miles farther out, Talaat Mohamed’s three acres of sweet potatoes are squeezed between four-, five- and seven-story apartment buildings like a jigsaw puzzle. A building recently went up a dozen feet from his field, with steel bars jutting from the foundation and piles of gravel alongside.

Mr. Mohamed, 60, routinely turns down eager land speculators because, he says, he loves working outdoors. But he complains about all the time spent removing urban detritus from his field, which on this day included a maroon brassiere, soda cans, food wrappers, wads of indistinguishable plastic, a Signal toothpaste box and a black flip-flop.

“The Egyptians invented farming,” he said, peering despairingly at a landscape of electric wires and buildings, traffic and trash. “And this is what it has become.”

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