Thoughts on Mohammed Faiz

The bombings in Casablanca on 14 April have long since faded from headlines, but Mohammed Faiz, the young cyber club manager responsible for preventing a far greater tragedy, remains severely injured and underreported. For those who do not know the story: two would-be suicide bombers entered Faiz's cyber club in the slums of Sidi Moumen (near Casablanca), bombs hidden under their clothes, and proceeded to check various jihadi websites for final instructions regarding which cafe or thoroughfare in which to murder dozens of people. Faiz felt that something was not right. At this point, he could have stepped back and done nothing. Instead, he shouted for everyone else to get out of the cafe, locked the doors, and phoned the police. In that moment, Faiz put his customers, his family's livelihood, and his own life in jeopardy. The two jihadis realized that they were trapped; one of them detonated his bombs, killing himself, destroying the cyber cafe, and injuring the other jihadi and Faiz. The police arrived to find smouldering wreckage, a dismembered body, and two injured young Moroccans.

Who saved the day here? As the above linked post observes, it was neither detectives nor spies nor police commandoes - just an ordinary citizen who noticed that something was suspicious and decided to act on his suspicions. (This is, of course, exactly the sort of thing that the Council of American-Islamic Relations would like to criminalize via its cooked-up lawsuits against the American counterparts to Faiz - see my earlier post.) This incident is further proof that without popular involvement, anti-terrorist efforts are far less likely to succeed.

I was amazed that no Western newspaper took up the story of Faiz. It seems that he would make a perfect human-interest story, an excellent example of a Muslim opposed to terrorism (the news is generally full of those who support or condone it), a shining example of civic spirit and individual selflessness. Was it ignorance? The Moroccan papers covered him; the King visited him in his hospital ward (though he was not given money to repair his wrecked cyber cafe, to the best of my knowledge. A few weeks ago he went on record saying that he felt that the Moroccan authorities had abandoned him when he most needed help. One wonders whether he would be inclined to repeat his heroism.)

Instead, we get reports like this: "Terrorist Networks Lure Young Moroccans to War in Far-Off Iraq Conflict, Recruiting Tool for Al-Qaeda Affiliates." (As early as July 2006 US intelligence operatives were traveling to Tetouane to investigate, though this article did not get written until February 2007.) Granted, there is a large pool of angry young men, who are, for a variety of reasons (the materialist/economic vs. ideological debate over primary causes remains unresolved), willing to kill for religious or political goals. But it is the people like Faiz who deserve more press coverage, whose example ought to be remembered.

The Stranger

A provocative poem for TQA readers, to be read in light of Hitchens' commentary on "Londonistan":

THE STRANGER within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell.
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy and sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.

This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.

- Rudyard Kipling

I also invite readers to enjoy this poem and the associated song - it captures a single moment and feeling rather beautifully.

Measuring Performance and Other Illusions

Blogger Joel Spolsky has argued that it is not possible to meaningfully quantify performance in knowledge-based professions because the measuring system can be "gamed" by workers to create the illusion of improved productivity while in reality increasing dysfunctionality. As Spolsky puts it,

Software organizations tend to reward programmers who (a) write lots of code and (b) fix lots of bugs. The best way to get ahead in an organization like this is to check in lots of buggy code and fix it all, rather than taking the extra time to get it right in the first place. When you try to fix this problem by penalizing programmers for creating bugs, you create a perverse incentive for them to hide their bugs or not tell the testers about new code they wrote in hopes that fewer bugs will be found. You can't win.

Similarly, Spolsky observes, rating customer service representatives by the number of calls taken leads to frequently disconnected calls as employees try to maximize the measurement criterion. (This happened to Amazon.com, among others.) Stock options for CEOs lead them to work to inflate the stock price even at the cost of corporate profits (Enron is only the most egregious example of such abusive "gaming.") As Robert Jackall (a professor at Mark's alma mater) described in his Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers, plant managers for major chemical corporations will often "milk" the plant, cutting costs by avoiding needed maintenance, hoping to get promoted before everything collapses.

Is Spolsky right? Is it impossible to measure knowledge-based work? If not, how is it possible?

The Burning of the School

The other day I recalled a popular elementary-school parody of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." It went something like this:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school
We have tortured all the teachers and have broken all the rules
We have barbecued the principal and have killed the PTA
And the janitors are on our side!

Glory, glory hallelujah
Teacher hit me with a ruler
I hid behind the door with a loaded .44
And teacher don't teach no more!

Though bloody and cruel, the song was, as I recall, quite popular and enjoyed many variations (for example, "I met her in the attic with a semiautomatic.")

I've always thought that the poems and songs of childhood are interesting to examine, not the least for their frequently surprising subversiveness and perversity. "Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts" is a sillier example. Sometimes these songs are even political, as with the "Joy to the world / Saddam Hussein is dead / we barbecued his head / and what about his body? / We flushed it down the potty..." 1991 classic.

Unfortunately, I am not familiar with gruesome children's lore in foreign languages. The Arabic children's rhymes I've mastered are all rather innocuous, such as this one, popular in northern Morocco:

Ash ta ta ta ta ta
Awlaidat al-harrata
Allem m'allem Bouzekri
Tayyeb li khozi bekri
Nakaloo ana w'khtee!

which roughly translates to "Rain (followed by what is an extended onomatapeia in Arabic), O children of the farmers, let's go to the wise Bouzekri, make me bread early, for me and my sister to eat!"

Hardly as impressive as slaughtering teachers and drowning them in their blood. But I wonder, perhaps Mark can contribute a Chinese rhyme that rivals the bloody-mindedness of US schoolchildren.

Also, why is it that such rhymes are tremendously funny for most children, but less funny to adults? (I remember that our teachers always got angry when we sang it; on the other hand, as an adult, I still find the songs funny.)

Irony

Burning cars, rioting throughout Paris, French Muslims protested Sarkozy's election by chanting: "Fascist Sarko! The people will have your skin." These riots began on election night and three days later show little sign of abating.

Who is currently using violence as a form of persuasion and political participation? Who has forced the French government to designate vast swathes of its cities - hundreds of regions throughout the country - as lawless no-go zones for police and city services?

Who are the real fascists here?

Only in China

Copyright infringement isn't really a problem in China; it's just a matter of a bunch of oversensitive Americans getting worked up over absolutely nothing at all. Take this perfectly innocent theme park near Beijing: any passing resemblance to a certain famous attraction in Southern California is strictly unintentional I'm sure. It seems like the kids really love posing with the cat with big ears, which is definitely not Minnie Mouse. Other fan favorites are the not-Cinderella's Castle, not-Donald Duck, not-Goofy, not-Great Thunder Railway, and the seven little guys with the very pretty lady. Oh, and the not-Doraemon and not-Hello Kitty, for some local Asian color.

(Hat tip to Scott on this one...)