Sameh El-Shahat’s Blog

© Sameh El-Shahat 2009

There is definitely truth to this. If you do not wash your teeth regularly, or do not floss on a regular basis, your state of oral hygiene may become so bad that bad breath will ensure that you have no friends. You will then become forlorn and fall into deep depression…

However, as I couldn’t care less about the state of your gums, you may have worked out already, being the free trade fan that I am, that I would be concerned about an equally alarming situation but of a different ilk.

If bacteria throughout the world were ever to act in a concerted fashion against us, then humanity would be wiped out  by, errrr..the day after tomorrow. Their combined cohorts of E.Coli, MRSA, Gangrene, Acne, and halitosis would make short work of our stress-weakened immune systems in no time.  It would therefore make perfect sense for us not to provoke the bacteria into attacking us. That is because we have recognised a long time ago that a lot of bacterian life  is actually quite beneficial to us. They help us digest our food, ferment our wine… And some bacteria are downright enjoyable! Take cheese for example. It is bacteria heaven and very edible, unless you are one of the chic elite who suffer from some trendy ailment such as cheese or gluten intolerance, in which case, please skip this article as it is wasted on you. We should know better than attack cheese it is part of the BACTERIA family and if anger them, they will strike back and kill us all.

There is a whiff of something rotten in the air

But attack cheese we did. Just before we left, President Bush, whom I happen to think was not such a bad egg, contrary to popular bovine belief, (bovine = adjective referring to most of you who prefer to go along with popular facile opinions known as Holy Cows), committed what is probably the worst atrocity of his presidency.

He slapped a 300% tax on Rocquefort cheese, home to legions of pungent bacteria. In doing so, he aroused the wrath of the French who are the closest thing we have to bacterian fifth columnists. You may think of the French as the people chosen by bacteria to act as spokespeople with the rest of humanity, such is their love for all manner of bacterian life.

The problem is that the consequence of this act may go far beyond merely depriving American gourmets of their daily ration of rotten cheese, or annoying the French who have alway felt their culture is superior to the American one. I am sure you will agree that when it comes to bacteria, the French certainly know a good culture. So much so that the French consume more cultures of bacterian (in cheese format) per capita than most other nations. It would be true to say that the French collaborate and connive with bacterian everyday in various ways, thereby staving off the total decimation of our race. It is because of this, and not because of that non-event of the French Revolution (my capitals, for sarcastic effect) or female hairy armpits as a fashion statement, that we owe a large debt of gratitude to the Gallic race

No, the problem with the raising of tariffs over chesse is that it may well be the opening shot of a new protectionist war as countries grapple with the recessions that have beset their economies. The world economy is in trouble and our leaders have fallen for the oldest trick in the book to salvage their positions. At the sound of the first shot, they wet their pants, forgot their capitalist credentials so fast that one may wonder whether we have been ruled all these years by socialist “sleeper” agents, and implemented measures that reek of economic nationlism.

For those of you who love Rocquefort as I do, the putrid whiff of protectionism makes the aroma of that rotten cheese seem relatively benign. Like a disease that spreads easily by human contact, it seems not to discriminate between the ordinary and the superhuman, or Obama, if bovine popular culture is to be believed. It is therefore no surprise that the have hear the new son of God Obama (move over, Jesus, Obama is here) sully his divine status with expressions like “Buy American”. At least he has shown his true colours, and I am not talking about his “suntanned” complexion, as Berlusconi described him.

The disease has spread. According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia has just imposed 28 new measures to reduce imports from other countries to protect its own industries from foreign incursions and help them export more. Apparently, that paragon of free trade, the EU Collective, sent a delegation to protest. They should know everything about free trade. According to other reports, they EU butter mountain is back. As demand has dropped, the EU has been using my money (I am EU citizen, whatever that means), to prop up (mostly French, I imagine) farmers, by buying up 30,000 tonnes of unsold butter. 

The French are naturally very unhappy about this state of affairs because part of their agreement with the World Bacteria Council - the body that runs global bacteria affairs - is that the flow of bacteria between humans should be unimpeded. Should we ever hinder the free flow of bacteria, then the bacteria will see this as an attack on their interest and will retaliate by killing us all.

By the same measure, the free flow of goods is vital to our existence, and politically motivated trade barrriers that stop the flow of goods detroy competition and capitalist incentives. Back in 1929, Willis Hawley and Reed Smoot, a couple of Americans who didn’t care for free trade, sponsored a bill that became law. It raised American tariffs on imported goods to extremely high levels. In the process they started a global protectionist tit-for-tat frenzy that led to the collapse of global trade. Oh yes, before I forget, a depression followed.

So please be careful. Bad handling of bacteria can cause a Depression (my Capital, for dramatic effect…)

© Sameh El-Shahat 2009

© Sameh El-Shahat 2009

As Designed By Me

I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago, on Wednesday 21st of January to be exact. I had taken the Eurostar train and on the way back from the Gare du Nord to London, I went through the now familiar double immigration checks. First the French checked my passport and let me through, and then, about four metres behind sat British immigration officials, on French soil.

Yes, folks, Britain has a foothold in France but sadly its influence is only limited to the Gare du Nord, through a dastardly French scheme to corner us in a station.
Why not have UK Borders Agency offices in Maxime, or La Tour D’Argent, for example? The answer all too simply is that without their agreeing to give us paranoid Brits a toehold in France to reject incomers while they are still in France (once they are in the UK, it would have been too late, illegal immigrants will be protected by the essentially politically correct immigration system that has seen the UK become home to all sort of terrorist because it was more humane to have them live with us with plans to blow us up, than to send them home to possibly be tortured by their regimes, if you believed their sad stories), then no chance of Margaret Thatcher agreeing to a tunnel.
They also put us in the station to show us that just because it is only a station, it does not mean that station food has to be disgusting like it is in the UK. Once we learn that lesson, then yes, may be allowed into Maxime’s to have an immigration office there, but one possibly by the cloakroom where we can cause the least damage ..One step at a time!

Anyways, the UK Borders guy kept looking at me, then back at my passport, then back to me, and so on for about 3 minutes. Just to explain, I have a lot more hair these days than I had in my passport picture. It usually elicits no more than the odd double take, or a smile, or a friendly chat about hair products usually with female immigration officers outside the UK. Those in the UK are usually the least friendly, almost invariably recruited from ethnic minorities that were given the most shit coming into the UK years ago. Now they take it out on people from ethnic minorities, it is all part of their therapy. Also, it makes sense that they would be the least likely to show favouritism to non-whites. Only white Brits seem to have that weird concept of giving strangers the benefit of the doubt and possible refuge. The imported lot usually retain their intolerance, and also are devoid of political correctness which is something the UK authorities have caught on to. Your writer is one such example…

No, he said, you cannot be the person in the passport picture. But why?, I retorted. Check my ears, I told him. He wasn’t too happy about this, as the checking of the ears is exactly what he was about to do, on account of it being the only part of our upper anatomy the shape of which is unique to us. If I knew that trick, obviously meant I was a dodgy person.

Do you have any other kind of ID?, he asked. And so, in one fell swoop, the passport, as a form of identity had been rendered obsolete. In doing so, the UK Borders official had finally admitted what we always knew to be true. Namely that passports don’t mean a thing about identity or belonging. In effect, they may confirm who you are in legal terms, but say nothing about your feelings, motivations and intent.

Here is a case in point. Britain is currently fighting against Islamist terrorism. And yet, most Islamists it is currently engaged in a war with are Brits. The guys who carried out the 7/7 bombings in London were Brits. They had a British passport. They were ‘legally” not foreigners. And yet, to all intents and purposes, they shared the same intent towards the UK as Hitler did.

You see, at some stage in our history, we saw it expedient to give passports the importance they have now when we could no longer track our increasing larger human populations on a personal level. People then started getting passports automatically either because they were born here (irrespective of their parents’ nationalities) or because they had been here long enough.

Centuries ago, everybody in a village knew everybody else so they could vouch for someone. You knew who that person is. The Swiss still force foreigners who want to be Swiss to live in a locality and get involved in it and then get the local people to each vote on whether that person should be given the nationality. Now that makes far more sense and, to date, I have not heard of an increase in Islamist terrorists of Swiss Nationality.
We just cannot be bothered. Instead, we offer Citizenship tests which are hardly the same thing. In the UK, people are far too politically correct to have your neighbours vote on you, for fear that you might accuse them of racism. In the UK now, people seem to feel racism and sue others for racism, sexism, and whatever kind of -ism at the drop of a hat. Much easier to let total strangers live in the land who potentially harbour violent feelings against us, than actually test their intentions.

Identity and belonging have historically been difficult to judge and gauge, not unlike faith, really. But there were empirical ways to measure that sense of identity or belonging, or instil it, if it did not abound. This was done by rites of passage. Usually, they were difficult tasks that only you can do and nobody could undertake on your behalf. They tested your mettle and in the process, helped you bond with your group. That gave you an identity that was yours and made you part of the group in a relationship based on trust, and not just bureaucracy. Also, it meant that you had an identity all your own. I laugh when they talk of “identity theft” just because your passport or credit card was stolen. If your only form of ID is a piece of paper, then you really should have your ID stolen and it doesn’t really say much about the kind of ID you had in the first place!

For my part, I decided that I should reinstate a new rite of passage. I present to you my new passport:

Entirely made by me

Ever wondered why the most important document you possess is such a flimsy publication? It is small, dog-eared, and easy to lose. Lose it at your peril, for you could lose your identity, or worse, have it stolen from you. It make the case that it is high time we choose more durable objects to replace the passport as a form of identity, especially in today’s security conscious world. This is the first of various suggestions put forward by me as valid substitutes. It may not fit into your wallet, but its stature is commensurate with the vital role it plays in our lives. As with all ethical scientists, I will be trying the experiments out on himself. Hence the Union Jack. Please do not try using these pieces at any airport. You may not get the reception you expect, or you might end up flying in the cargo hold, or worse. They are fully fledged furniture implements but not universally accepted as passports. Handmade and hand-finished as it is, the artist is still working on including unique DNA and biometric data to ensure that the furniture can be traced back to you in case of theft by nimble-fingered identity-thieves. For all you animal lovers out there, you will be glad to know that no animals were used in the testing of these new products by Tavola Rasa. They don’t need passports. And we’re supposed to be the higher forms of life…

Now that was my rite of passage. I made that passport and it was hard going. I really only truly felt like a Brit after making it, that is, some 10 years after I got my flimsy paper passport!!!
I am currently working on a portable version to take through the Gare du Nord.

© Sameh El-Shahat 2009