What will unemployed young college grads do in the United States of America?

When we talk about the reason I surfed from Israel to Lebanon, well, there is the clear-hell obvious question of "Why?" (in fact, I almost named the Preface in the book that). One of the main reasons was that the U.S. job market was in the worst shape since The Great Depression . . . and there were few options that May 2009, few places for America's college grads to go.

Part of what I'm "selling" in Surfing the Middle East is that these economic hard times have historically proven to be the golden era for artists and entrepreneurs alike . . . and on the production level, that has been Surfing the Middle East. (Don't know what I'm talking about? I've just started Casbah Publishing to own my work, and click here.)

I should also say that I've hired a graph designer to make a 16-page color insert in the Surfing the Middle East hardcover book that will incorporate pictures, maps and graphics from the entire trip . . . a sort of high-quality colleague of sorts . . . that is significantly more in depth than nearly any publishing house I've talked to--or know about--would do.

Both Arianna Huffington & The New York Times have produced articles this week on what I'm calling The Generation of Broken Dreams: the kids who went to college, put in the hours, and find themselves better off working the same two-bit service gig they had in high school.

From Arianna:

This actually isn't all that surprising, given the skyrocketing cost of tuition, which has been going up at an annual rate of 5 percent. According to a briefing paper by the Economic Policy Institute, in 2008-2009, the total cost of attending college on-campus was over $18,000 for those going to a public school, and over $38,000 for those at a private school. When you consider that over the same period the median household income in the U.S. was $49,777, it's not hard to see why even a public college is out of reach for so many American families, at least without going deeply into debt.

And the job market won't be doing the Class of 2011 any favors in helping to repay that debt. According to EPI, the unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 in 2010 was 18.4 percent, the highest it's been since the number has been tracked, going back 60 years. From April of last year until March of this year, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates hovered around 9.7 percent. In 2007, it was just over 5 percent. And while the fact that we're still clawing our way out of a recession affects those figures, at roughly the same point in the last two recessions -- 1992 and 2003 -- the unemployment rate for new grads was 6.9 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.

And from the New York Times:

Now evidence is emerging that the damage wrought by the sour economy is more widespread than just a few careers led astray or postponed. Even for college graduates — the people who were most protected from the slings and arrows of recession — the outlook is rather bleak.

Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work. What’s more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree, reviving debates about whether higher education is “worth it” after all.

“I have friends with the same degree as me, from a worse school, but because of who they knew or when they happened to graduate, they’re in much better jobs,” said Kyle Bishop, 23, a 2009 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh who has spent the last two years waiting tables, delivering beer, working at a bookstore and entering data. “It’s more about luck than anything else.”

So it is out of This Picture that surfing from Israel to Lebanon--and trying to tell the story of the Middle East through surfing--seemed like a good idea. And sweet hell, why not?

Aluf Benn on Bibi from the Knesset

Jeffery Goldberg has already taken the liberty of posting this "chilling" review of Bib's assessment of the Middle East of late. So, I'll do it again. And yes, "chilling" is the word to use.

Bibi's Knesset speech from Aluf Benn:

Netanyahu's situation assessment is chilling. The Middle East is in the throes of instability. Iran and its allies, Hezbollah and Hamas - "the new oppressor," as Netanyahu called them, using a word reserved for some of the greatest villains in Jewish history - seek to destroy Israel and the Jewish people. Israel has no Palestinian partner for negotiations and a peace agreement, and there will be no such partner in the years ahead.

In the pivotal portion of his speech, Netanyahu referred to the Palestinian girl at the Nakba Day demonstration in Bil'in who held a large key. "Every Palestinian understands what key this is. It is not the key to their homes in Bil'in or Nablus or Ramallah, it is the key to our homes in Jaffa, Acre, Haifa and Ramle." The message is clear: We are fighting for our homes. "They" want to get rid of us and establish Palestine on the ruins of Israel. Now is the time to dig in and and fight them.

Update: I'm sorry. That's too depressing to leave as a post. In other news, I was up in San Francisco this weekend, hangin' & drinkin' with some buddies and talking about things. Anyway, check out my friend Zack's art. King Hell Bastard quality, for sure. Very Ralph Steadman.

performance of military

I enjoyed this part of Abu Muqawama's post today. I enjoyed the rest of it, too.

Note: There is a vocal segment of this blog's readership that gets all bent out of shape when I dispassionately write about the IDF in the same way I would any other military organization. (Because, you know, "Don't Forget Palestine!" etc.) There is another segment of this readership that gets bent out of shape when I dispassionately write about Hizballah or Hamas in the same way I would any other military organization. (Because, you know, Islam! 9/11! Terror! etc.) All of you need to chill. Trying to analyze and write about the performance of military organizations in as value-neutral a way as possible is part of my job.]

Aid in Africa, editorialized by Paul Theroux

Well . . . according to my Facebook page for Surfing the Middle East, Rolf Potts, someone who I've got to know from emails and his wonderful book (Vagabonding), has interviewed another travel writer, Paul Theroux.

I remember reading some gibberish by Theroux in some college class, where Paul was on some bus in some African country, talking to some young idealistic women about some reason why she wanted to come to Africa. My teacher at the time sort of came down on Theroux for riding her ass about the concept of African aid, basically amounting to the fact that most do it for their own reasons, and in the process end up doing as much harm as good to the traditional societies they work in.

Anyway, I had completely forgotten about this little episode from my college days, but in reading Rolf's interview of grumpy old Paul, I remembered exactly. And to go further, perhaps old Paul has a point. I think he does. (Though he could have been nicer to that girl on the bus.)

From the interview in the Atlantic:

Speaking of books that contain an element of travel, Greg Mortenson's bestseller about Central Asia was in the news recently. Were you surprised by the allegations that Three Cups of Tea contained fabrications?

No, I wasn't. One of the things the Tao of Travel shows is how unforthcoming most travel writers are, how most travelers are. They don't tell you who they were traveling with, and they're not very reliable about things that happened to them. For example, everyone loved John Steinbeck's book Travels With Charley. Turns out he didn't travel alone, his wife kept meeting him, yet she was never mentioned in the book. Steinbeck didn't go to all the places he mentioned, nor did he meet all the people he said he met. In other words, Travels With Charley is fiction, or at least half-fiction. As for Three Cups of Tea, I think that philanthropists and humanitarians are even less forthcoming about what they do. I guess this guy did build a couple of schools in Afghanistan, but a self-promoting humanitarian is not someone I have a great deal of trust or belief in. I lived for six years in Africa and I've been to Africa numerous times since then. People build schools for their own reasons—not to improve a country.

The people I've known who've done great things of that type—you know, building hospitals, running schools—are very humble people. They give their lives to the project. Missionaries get a bad rap, but I've known missionaries in Africa who were very self-sacrificing and humble and who did great things. They ran schools, hospitals, libraries; they helped people. Some wrote dictionaries and translated languages that hadn't been written down. I saw a lot of missionaries in Africa that were doing that, and you would never know their names; they came and did their work, and now they're buried there.

Protests in Aleppo

For a long time you didn't see protests in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. It was calm. And a while ago it was thought that the reason for this is that Syria's second most populous city didn't have an Alawite population, nearly all of whom receive absurd social handout. Thus, the population of Aleppo--mostly Armenian Christians and Sunni Muslims--lived in a sort of non-the-presidents-sect ignorance, as they couldn't see how uneven Syrian society actually was.

That was the theory. And while it may have some strong gravity to it, there now have been protests in Aleppo reported . . . so as to what's really going on there, I haven't a clue. (Hint: I don't think anyone does.)

Limmits of American democracy

It's been a year and a half since I've been in the Middle East now--and it's funny how my mind starts to change about the place. I suppose you can't blame people who study a place they haven't been in for awhile. They fall into abstractness. That's one thing I'm always so impressed with when I arrive in Middle East, or for that mater anywhere else I study: I remember the general disconnect between my personal experience on the ground versus what it seemed like from afar.

I've always appreciated Michael Scheuer's views on the Middle East; he is as realistic as he is pragmatic and he seems unafraid of talking about the limits of American power.