This is the year 2010. If you look back at the mass media of five or six years ago in the “Western” countries, you will not find the slightest hint that the “Eastern” country of China was the rising economic power it is known to be today. Yet, China did not get to where it is overnight; it got here by registering impressive rates of growth year after year for many years if not many decades. The same can be said about India which has been registering spectacular rates of growth for several years, a reality that was ignored by the Western media until three years ago. This performance is so dismal, it casts a shadow of suspicion and distrust at the professional stance taken by the editors of the Western media if not at their wisdom. And now, something even worse is happening because the same people are not only ignoring another part of the world that is on the move, they are deliberately spinning the realities they encounter there in such a way as to make the accomplishments they see look like shortcomings and the triumphs they know exist look like defeats. The place in question is the Arab Middle East where the editors of most Western publications are shamelessly misrepresenting the truth and flagrantly turning things upside down.
A case in point is an article published on November 3, 2010 in the Financial Times under the title: “Egypt caught in a cotton bind”. It tells a story that happens literally hundreds of times everyday to lucky people and lucky nations on this planet but this time has been the one time -- the only one time in all of history -- that a story like this was described in such negative terms when the reality is that the opposite of how the story was titled is the absolute truth. Here is that story. Because the Egyptian economy has few rivals in the way that it is diversified, it suffers very little when fortunes change and hit one sector of the economy while boosting another sector. For example, having a strong and healthy agricultural sector, the country feeds more than 80 million people and leaves a surplus that is large enough to exchange with foreign countries what it has in excess -- like fruits and vegetables -- for staples that the other countries have in excess such as wheat. This done, Egypt still has enough leftover to give food aid to hungry neighbors such as Israel which also receives energy aid from Egypt and water aid from its northern neighbors going as far away as Turkey. But there is more to the story because agriculture means more than the production of food; it also means the production of industrial commodities such as lumber, flowers and of course the cotton for which Egypt has been famous for decades.
Even though Egypt has a near monopoly on the high quality cotton that the world produces, it also has a massive textile industry that requires large amounts of the short fiber cotton which is of the cheap, low quality variety. The industry uses this type to make apparel such as work clothes, children clothes, denims and other popular items for which long fiber, high quality cotton would be too expensive to use. Thus, every year, the farmers of Egypt look at the price of commodities on the world markets and make a choice from among an embarrassment of riches. Each farmer decides for himself or herself whether to plant, among other things, mainly fruits and vegetables, mainly wheat or mainly cotton. If they choose the latter, they must decide how much of it they should plant then decide how much of that should be in the long fiber variety and how much should be in the short fiber variety. The government of Egypt too has a few decisions to make because, like everywhere else in the world, it subsidizes the farmers one way or another and thus helps to steer their decision in this direction or in that one. And in making its own decisions, the government takes into account the balancing act it must do as it weighs the agricultural needs of the nation against the needs of the various industrial sectors of the economy, most notably the food processing and the textile sectors.
Situations such as these do not point to a country that is in a bind like says the title of the Financial Times article. On the contrary, situations such as these point to a healthy state that is enjoyed by a lucky people who are on the move. A more appropriate title for the article would have gone something like this: “Lucky Egypt lucky again this year”. In fact, if the editors of the Financial Times want to learn how to practice journalism the way professionals do, they should read the Oxford Group which might have chosen such a title for a subject such as this. But this is not the way that the Financial Times does business, and the question to ask is this: Why would someone interminably violate the code of ethics of their profession, cease to do journalism the right way and transform into a machine of hate propaganda that is forever badmouthing Egypt and its people, a country that never did anything to hurt them or their people? In doing what they do rather than be truthful to their people and respectful of them, the editors of the Financial Times as well as the other Western publications miss the opportunity to help their own countrymen catch opportunities overseas where the competition is at work reaping huge benefits and laying the groundwork to reap even more rewards in the future.
In fact, the same China and the same India which the Western business publications ignored only a few years ago are now investing in Egypt. To be truthful, they are not investing at levels that equal the American or British companies as yet but this has to do with the way that history has unfolded not with any decision made by someone recently. It is that the Americans and the Britons have taken advantage of the old ties that their predecessors had forged with the countries of the Middle East to continue betting on the oil and gas industries of the region, including Egypt. Thus, while the Western investments in the country are almost exclusively in the exploration and extraction of oil and gas, the Chinese and the Indian investments are in the more promising manufacturing industries as well as the infrastructure of the country. Yes, these people too are interested in oil and gas but they are doing more than explore and extract them, they are building refineries and factories where value is added to the petroleum based products they process and manufacture.
So then I ask: What is wrong with the editors of the Financial Times, The Economist, Forbes Magazine, CNBC and BNN? And I ask: What is wrong with the editors of the news agencies such as AP, UPI, AFP and Reuters? And I ask: What is wrong with the editors of the media outlets that have a business section but fail to highlight to their readers and their audiences the business opportunities that exist in the Arab Middle East? Why do they all seem to have a debilitating sort of acid-like hatred flowing in their veins instead of the blood that is meant to take oxygen to their braincells and make them think like human beings were designed to do? Well, the short answer is that nobody is born this way but people are altered to become like that. In fact, the editors of the Financial Times had all the information they needed to find a better title for the article but they deliberately chose the worst title that a savagely mutilated mind could ever have chosen.
When you read the article which was written by Heba Saleh -- an Arabic name -- you find it to be on the whole a balanced article, something that contrasts sharply with the title. Ms. Saleh does make the point that while the textile industry is hurting which is understandable, the farmers of Egypt are cheering the high price of cotton which is also understandable. She explains that the high price is a setback for the (world) textile industry which is true but where she makes a small mistake is when she says that this threatens the competitiveness of the (Egyptian) textile industry in a tight international market. The truth is that when the price of a commodity rises, everyone pays the same high price and thus nobody is supposed to gain a competitive advantage over the others or be at a disadvantage compared to the others. As you can see, however, the operative term here is “supposed to” because what is supposed to happen can sometimes differ from what actually happens. So let us see if Ms. Saleh has something to say about that.
She says that textile is so important to Egypt, the government has taken measures to prop up the industry as the price of cotton rises. She quotes the man who heads the chamber of the textile industry, a man that praises the measures taken by the government but voices anxiety about a situation that is common to our time not just to Egypt. He says that low wage countries such as India and Pakistan can present formidable competition to others. However, the man has a solution for this problem, says Ms. Saleh. He wants the government to encourage the cultivation of more short and medium fiber cotton because international taste has shifted towards casual clothes that require this type of cotton. The man also wants the government to provide more subsidies to exporters of local fabrics. Ms. Saleh then mentions another possible problem and quickly provides a possible solution for it. The problem is that when the price of cotton falls, the farmers turn to other crops but the price can then turn around and rise suddenly before the farmers have had the time to plant a new crop. To avoid a situation like this, the textile producers and the cotton exporters have joined the farmers in calling on the government to establish a fund to protect the farmers when the price of cotton falls.
What this says, in effect, is that because Egypt produces cotton at all levels of quality and because it has a healthy textile industry, it has constructed what is called a vertically integrated system. And the result is that the nation can design a solution to any problem that may arise and come out practically unscathed if not a winner however tough the environment may be. Yes, one sector of the economy will suffer a little but so will the same sector everywhere else in the world. The difference is that in Egypt, the suffering can be alleviated because it will be offset by the gains made in another sector, a situation that gives the government the means to lend a helping hand thus even things out. In the end, the whole country will remain on even keel or be slightly ahead despite the circumstances. And the bottom line is that contrary to what the Financial Times says, Egypt is not caught in a cotton bind; it is riding high on the high price of cotton. It is the luckiest of the lot not by accident but by the work of its people and the choices that were made by its leaders.
But why do the editors of the Financial Times and the other Western publications want to hide this reality from their readers and their audiences when they know that sooner or later the truth will come out as it did in the cases of China and India? There too, the same publications had nothing but negative things to say about India for a long time -- democracy or no democracy -- playing up the hatred that had accumulated over the country's system of caste and over its cultural habit of burning the brides that did not take an adequate dowry to their impoverished new husbands. Also, the Western publications had nothing but negative things to say about China, playing up the hatred that had accumulated over the country's practices concerning issues of human rights. This sort of behavior on the part of the media went on and on until they could hide the economic successes of the East no more at which point they separated the politics from the economics. In time, they learned to ignore the politics of the matter as they made a one hundred and eighty degrees turn with regard to the economic issues. They began to describe the rise of the Eastern nations in glowing terms because this was the reality; it was the truth they could no longer paint with the brush of cheap politics and hateful propaganda.
But what were the various individuals doing in private as they lied to their readers and their audiences in public? I do not know the answer to this question with regard to China or India because I never tried to find out at the time. However, I tried to find out what was going on with the more recent phenomenon of badmouthing Egypt by those who call themselves financial analysts. I discovered in some instances that they were secretly investing in the country while saying and writing horrible things about it. They dressed their commentary to make it look like it was political in nature when it was, in reality, designed to discourage the readers and the viewing audiences from investing in Egypt for what you might call a diabolical reason. And what exactly is that? you may ask. And the answer is that they were investing in Egypt because they knew the place was destined to become a gusher sooner or later. Until this happens, they wanted the hordes to stay out of there lest they push the prices high while they and their friends were still doing the buying.
In fact, Egypt was included in each of the groups of countries that someone had called -- at one time or another -- the Next Eleven, the CIVETS and the Promising Frontier Economies. These were the countries that the big investment houses saw as taking their place under the sun and flourishing in the same way that the Asian Tigers and the BRIC nations did before them. ETFs and DRs were setup to invest in Egypt and similar countries which is where the smart money was moving at an accelerated rate. And when something like this happens, the less smart money, which is sometimes called the retail money, lags behind as it is committed only after the prices had risen.
Well, my dear reader, I submit that the editors of the aforementioned publications together with their analyst buddies and their friends are taking advantage of the current political climate with regard to the Middle East to nurture and to play up the hatred that has been whipped up against Egypt. While they do this, they are having a feast investing in the country they say they hate while discouraging everyone else from joining the banquet. These people think of themselves as being intelligent and consider their money to be the smart one. They see their readers and their audiences as being dumb and see their money as being less smart than their own. Thus, they believe that they sit at the top of the food chain and have priority while they see their readers and their audiences as being lower on the pecking order, the reason why they must wait to have their fill.
As I see things now, this is an insidious conflict of interest that has the term financial crime written all over it. As journalists, these people should enforce their own code of ethics, denounce themselves as being corrupt to the core and demand that they be prosecuted and if found guilty – which they will, having admitted to their crime by denouncing themselves – they should be thrown in jail.
And don't ask me to go visit them when they get there because I never will.