Am I the only one who did not know that Barbie’s birthday and International Women’s Day were both on March 8th? It’s so absurd it could only be true.

In honor, the Times has a lovely piece on Barbie in Iran. And, dated but still interesting, Katherine Zoepf’s coverage of the doll pictured below, Fulla.

Fulla, Barbie's Middle Eastern competitor.

Specifically focused on Egypt. Facebook and its potential to electrify the Arab world are very much on the minds of people looking at the Middle East of late - I attended a conference on Friday on Obama and the Global Media where the keynote speaker focused almost entirely on Facebook and how students of Middle Eastern Politics can hope to understand it. (I stole the “echochamber or town hall” bit from one of the panels - too good not to re-use!). I’m looking forward to hearing what our friends at the Egypt blog have to say on this piece; its greatest strength, in my opinion, is in its devotion to the communication of facts about the events, outlining what's happened in this Facebook movement. I’ve been an FB members since shortly after its inception in 2004, and so I find the awe with which Facebook is generally approached by those for whom it hasn't been a feature of their entire adult social lives a little tiresome; this piece avoids that in many ways. Here is an excerpt:
When I spoke to Wael Nawara, a 47-year-old Ghad activist who is a co-founder of the party, he explained why, for him, getting on Facebook was such a big eye-opener. If you look at Egyptian politics on the surface, he said, you might think that the Muslim Brotherhood is the only alternative to the Mubarak regime. But "Facebook revealed a liberal undercurrent in Egyptian society," Nawara said. "In general, there's this kind of apathy, a sense that there is nothing we can do to change the situation. But with Facebook you realize there are others who think alike and share the same ideals. You can find Islamists there, but it is really dominated by liberal voices."

This bit, to me, underlines the ‘networking’ part of 'social networking site’. Facebook in this context lets people know that they are not the only ones who feel the way they feel, and in this reflection there is amplification. This is, in my opinion, a sound rebuttal to the idea of interest groups online as an echochamber: even if people with exclusively similar views only communicate with each other through the internet, them talking back to one another day after day stokes their ideas and forces them to amplify, change, and develop. There is no stasis.

… the LA Times profiles a teenage girl in Tyre, Lebanon, named Hiba Qassir, who is studying at a high school backed by Hezbollah. She comments on her various ambitions, including becoming a film director, and calls martyrdom “the shortest way to heaven”. The summary bit below the headline (I am not sure what the journalistic term is for it - help?) reads as follows:

 Aspiring filmmaker Hiba Qassir is about to graduate from a Hezbollah-backed high school. She loves movies, but would give up her career dream if offered the chance to be a suicide bomber.

One has to wonder whether these Lebanese teens have gotten wise to the fact that saying you’d be willing to become a suicide bomber is the quickest way to a two-page feature on you in a major foreign paper. I don't mean to suggest that I think that necessarily happened in this case, but I wonder what the discourse on those sorts of issues is in Lebanon.

Robert Worth of the NYT looks at the ways Hezbollah reaches out to Lebanese mothers, children and young men. Could we call this “a battle for hearts and minds”?

Several Egyptian bloggers traveled to the US to cover the American presidential election on their blogs; this story in the National asks them to share their reflections on the process with respect to Egyptian domestic politics. Excerpt:

For the most part, the bloggers are holding their breath, wondering how the new Obama administration will affect their world.

Some, like Mahmoud Saber, are optimistic‚ even if hesitantly so. On the day of the election, Saber, 21, wrote, "change is possible… yes… America chose the change." Maybe, he writes, an Obama administration will support dictatorial regimes. "But Obama elected…means change is possible…and now it's our time to do it in Egypt."

"I think the key difference that allows this to happen [in America] is the fact that people think things can change," Sultan says of the Obama victory. "In Egypt and the Middle East, people don't think that things can change. The reason things don't catch on as much is the fact that no one has faith in the future."

Back in Austin, Sandmonkey and Naje attend a pizza party hosted by local Democrats. As the room erupts with the announcements that Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida have gone to Obama, they walk around, unfazed. They return to their hotel to continue watching the returns, first in their room, then downstairs, at the hotel's bar and restaurant, where they watch Obama's speech at Grant Park. They roll their eyes and tell jokes in Arabic when Obama mentions the 106-year-old woman who lived through the civil rights movement and had the opportunity to vote for Obama , and at the puppy Obama promises his children. A man at the bar glares repeatedly in their direction before asking them to be quiet; they're not respecting the weight of this historic moment.

As the speech winds down and Sandmonkey and Naje walk outside to have a smoke. They understand the enormity of what has just happened , that the U.S. has elected its first black president. But, still, they're slightly cynical.

"It's not like things have changed for me," says Naje, taking a puff of his cigarette. "I still have Mubarak."

"And Gamal," he adds after a slight pause. "Nothing has changed for me."

The New York Times has another installment of their ‘Generation Faithful‘ series on youth in the Middle East. This edition focuses on Dubai, a city that “has everything money can buy, but it does not have a unifying culture or identity.” Dubai in its current form is a young city; the UAE came into being in 1971. Michael Slackman, the author, doesn't really discuss this.

All of the GenFaith pieces follow a format wherein they follow around a single young man, group of friends, or pair of people and from their draw conjectures about the youth of a country or race (Arab). This makes for good writing but probably weak cultural analysis. This one, “Young and Arab in a Land of Mosques and Bars,” stars Rami Galal, an Egyptian working construction in Dubai; its conclusion seems to be that while Mr. Galal has made sacrifices in coming to Dubai, he has ultimately gained social mobility, at least in theory. In Dubai, unlike Egypt, he can advance through his work; it is not glamorous but he has opportunity.

Moustafa Bayoumi, professor at Brooklyn College, published a book this year called How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America. It follows the stories of seven young Arab-Americans living in Brooklyn in the wake of 9/11 to illustrate their conflicted relationships with their country of residence. It was excerpted in New York Magazine last month; the story of Rasha and her family, jailed for three months on immigration charges, is upsetting at the very least. I haven't yet read the book, but it comes highly recommended. (Thanks to Ebtihal for that).

Bayoumi's explicit parallel between his work and W.E.B. Dubois’ The Souls of Black Folk has been a minor sensation, as books go - you can, for example, join the Facebook group. Clearly it has resonance for a group beyond its subjects; the consequences for America will likely be far-reaching as well. In an interview at Salon.com, Bayoumi points out the following:

The Gulf as a whole and Dubai in particular have an allure to this younger generation for many complicated reasons. One of which is there seems to be a growing hostility to all things Muslim in the United States. They think if they go to the Gulf they can escape a lot of that. Then there's the role of globalization. Dubai is now seen as a hot spot — it's where the action is. It's interesting to me because this earlier generation, his father's generation, believed that about the United States. They could come to the United States and fulfill all of their potential. Now, in a lot of ways, their children feel that way about a place like Dubai.

On this blog, I try to point out the cultural and business news coming out of the Gulf because it isn't just Arab-Americans that see the Gulf as an emerging cultural and business center. It's a fascinating area of growth that provides a sort of counter-point to other Middle East news about wars and terrorism. The combination of that growth and America's conflicted relationship with globalization and … other politics will have interesting consequences. It would be nice to hear a little more about these ideas from the Presidential candidates. Unfortunately, they are too busy quibbling over cliches.