Dear government media sources: When google translates “infiltrators” as “State officials reported,” you know you are sticking to a certain script too hard.

A week ago tonight, at least 26 Egyptians died after the military very violently broke up a protest in downtown Cairo. Egyptian Christians, joined by Muslims, were protesting their marginalization in Egyptian society. In particular, they were protesting inaction by the military junta after an Arson attack in the southern Egyptian province of Aswan burned down a church.

State media falsely reported that the Christians “snatched” weapons from the soldiers and fired on them. That claim ended up being carried by the Associated Press, making its way to many western papers and websites. ‘Snatched’ is a word that I had never heard in a serious context, although I could maintain that assertion since official news switched their story later to say foreign elements incited the violence. State media basically informed Egyptians that Christians were attacking the army, and honorable citizens should go ‘defend’ the military. When a friend of mine who was at the protests asked people who came why they came, they said they saw it on TV. Even more troubling is that police officers reportedly told people Egyptians in coffee shops that the Quran was being burned by Christians at the protest, bringing even more people to the defense of the Army, thinking they were defending Islam. By the time things calmed down, at least 26 Egyptians were dead and hundreds injured, some shot, but many crushed by armored personnel carriers (APCs) driving erratically through the crowds.

The most troubling civil violence comes not when organized institutions of power (i.e. the army) that are coordinated from the top-down, but when individuals latch onto a certain narrative and engage in violence themselves. Once civil violence penetrates down to an individual rather than on an organizational level, it is bad, bad news. That is what happened last Sunday. Videos from the clashes have been surfacing, showing civilians with bars, clubs, chains, etc. beating protestors.

The tragic irony is that official media’s narrative of what was going on–that the violence was sectarian in nature–essentially was spoken into existence. There is no doubt sectarianism is alive and well in egypt, but positing the clashes in sectarian terms by saying that Christians were attacking the army brought regular Egyptians to the clashes to fight for their ‘sect.’ It distracted viewers and listeners from what was originally going on: that the army was violently suppressing a protest that directly challenged the military junta’s inability or its unwillingness to protect the Christian minority. When the army draws its legitimacy as a defender of all Egyptians regardless of color or creed, framing your protest in a way that suggests otherwise is a direct challenge to those in power. For the ruling military council, resetting the narrative to sectarianism is a convenient way to delegitimize the protestors and increase your relevancy as a security provider.

Convincing Egyptians that the clashes were a case of rulers suppressing the ruled, rather than Christians venting sectarian anger on the Egyptian military, is going to be an uphill battle. Although Egyptian media is much freer than it was this time last year, independent media is still either drowned out by a much larger state media apparatus, beholden to commercial considerations (speaking the ‘truth,’ as conceived by the news consumer), or simply censored/self-censored. But, considerable efforts are being made to counter the official account. The military council’s multimedia press conference was countered by an alternative one that gave protestors’ account of what happened, and websites have popped up full of testimonies of how a the interaction between the military and protestors turned violent. These are all local initiatives meant for Egyptians, not foreigners. On a related note, considerable foreign media coverage has already latched onto the sectarian narrative,* probably because sectarian violence is an intriguing topic that their readers like to read about, rather than place sectarian violence in a wider context. I can’t emphasize how important it is to find journalists (not outlets) that you trust when following the news.

What happened last week highlights how far Egypt will have to go in order to transition to a functional open society. It is hard to imagine a democratic Egypt that does not have independent voices to challenge the narrative placed in citizen’s minds, regardless if that message is broadcasted by a Mubarak regime, a military regime, or even a democratically elected one.

*There are other examples of this, but this is a good example of ignoring wider considerations before prioritizing the sectarian dynamic.

I’ve been working on a pretty technical post about Egypt’s ‘new’ electoral districts. I’m hoping to give everyone a tiny bit of insight into how the elections could play out and how the military council decided to split up competition. Unfortunately, just as I’m close to finishing military council decided to change the law. Not completely unpredictable, but still a little frustrating. Some of the ground work has been laid though, so I’ll hopefully be able quickly process the new law once it comes out.

So you don’t leave empty-handed, here are some of the better things I’ve been reading. A lot of these are outside of what I usually focus on (or really outdated) but I’m sure you’ll enjoy them if you haven’t already.

New:

Katy Perry’s HOT ‘N COLD ft. President Ali Abdullah Saleh: Katy Perry was actually singing about Ali Abdullah Saleh’s propensity to change his mind.

Syria: The revolution will be weaponised – al-Jazeera English: First of a seven part series that is a must read. Nir Rosen was in Syria for seven weeks and spoke to activists, Islamists, normal Syrians of every color and creed, army defectors, aka everybody.

Secrets of a Super-fixer in Libya – Reuters: Former SAS BA in Libya

The Surreal Ruins of Qaddafi’s Never-Never Land – The New York Times Magazine: This title is pretty much what it seems, although mentioning Never Land in the same breath as Gadhafi’s curly hair and eccentricity is sure to bring thoughts of Michael Jackson.

Shovel-Ready Shibboleths- The Wall Street Journal: Friedman getting crapped on is my favorite.

Hot Teachers – Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel: The recent teachers’ strike seems to be part of a bigger trend of interest groups in Egypt fighting for more parochial interests.

Ziad Baroud: The Minister That Never Was: al-Akhbar English: Profile of Lebanon’s promising politician that never delivered on structural reform. Sounds familiar.

The Return of the NDP – Ahram Online: Mubarak’s party quietly returns to politics.

Old:

What Do Egypt’s Writers Do Now? – New York Times: Apparently Egyptian authors’ muses were chased out with Mubarak.

The Arab Counterrevolution – The New York Review of Books: Depressing look at the revolutions, although to be expected.

Blowback in Somalia – The Nation: Crash course in Somalia, if one exists.

Getting Bin Laden – The New Yorker: How the assassination went down.

My apologizes for the long hiatus. The last couple weeks have been pretty busy, both for me and in my neck of the woods. I recently just left a (very) brief stint as a business reporter for an English-Language news website here called Bikyamasr. The work depleted my staring-at-the-computer quota most days, so I unfortunately neglected my duty to post here. If–for some reason–you’re interested in telecom industry in North Africa, you kind find what I wrote here. I’m now a copy editor at the English Edition of al-Youm as-Sabea (اليوم السابع), or “The Seventh Day.” English edition here, Arabic here.

I’ll also use my recent trip to Dubai as an excuse for not writing. On my trip I decided that Dubai has quasi post-apocalyptic feel to it due to what appears to be a perfect storm.

For one, it was the worst weather I’ve ever experienced. 98º F at night, unbelievable humidity, and dust from the desert clogging up the air. On more than one occasion I woke up to find that the industrial strength AC had caused the air to condense on the entirety of the windows. I also was able to visit the interior desert, and now can say that I experienced what 50º C (122º F) feels like (not pleasant).

In the middle of this, a building boom has caused dozens of ridiculously new buildings to sprout up. A friend of my dad’s described Dubai as an architects dream. Real estate was such a bull market, so Architects could pitch their design to one of the hundreds of developers looking to cash in. The result is striking. I have never seen so many sumptuous designs in my life in the same place. But, the thing is, most of them are empty since the financial crisis–including the the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. The Burj Khalifa was originally called the Burj Dubai before it underwent a close to last-minute name change that cost more than a million dollars. The name change served as a reminder to Dubai that after bailing it out, Abu Dhabi is (still) the top dog amongst the seven emirates.

Click for Detail

You also expect more human and automobile traffic in such a scene, but there simply isn’t. The combination of heat, real estate oversupply, and financial crisis have created a city that seems to be running at 10% of capacity. At first I thought it was like a zombie movie, but I think Dubai is more reminiscent of the rapture, making Dubai more Left Behind than 28 Days Later–the rapture being the Financial Crisis.

The rapture/financial crisis left much of Dubai’s population to deal with the depressed economy and to feed and water the smaller number of tourists who still come there. One worker I met was from Peshawar, Pakistan, who came to Dubai in 2006, waited 6 months for work, then was laid off in the midst of the meltdown before he could find work again cleaning malls, then as a cab driver. He saves money by sharing a two room apartment with 11 other workers like him, and sends most money of his back home to Pakistan.

It will be interesting to see if Dubai, and the other Emirates for that matter, are able to fight off all the forces hell-bent on ruining the Emirati Princes’ project and pet projects. For now they heat, financial woes, a lack of indigenous culture (which it seems to have traded for facile capitalism), and the desert are all working against them. Their only weapon seems to be their petro-dollars, which are quickly running out and seem to have already won round one.