First, the whinged on that they had sent letters to the US and UK govs (why they raised this with me escapes me entirely except their confusion between private and public sectors) asking that the AngloSaxon multinationals present in country be advised/requested to off-shore some of the R&D and Tech development to this fine little country.

I was, to say the least, a bit taken aback by this issue being raised in the meeting as (i) I have fuck all to do with USG or UK policy (or any other Anglo Saxon hive mind government policy for that matter) in re off-shoring or the like, (ii) I was there to talk about potential things to do in the technology space and rap about potential improvements they might make to their backwards ass dirigiste approach to investment promotion in this fine, lovely, but often pointlessly but profoundly economically retarded country.

However, the very idea that writing to an Anglo Saxon type government asking that "its" pure private sector multinational firms be directed to invest some portion of their R&D budget and transfer tech to the MENA region is absolutely droolingly idiotic, bordering on retarded.

These poor sad bastards don't bloody get it. They really don't bloody get it. If USG wrote to, just for argument, Coca Cola and says "off shore some of your R&D T Land" the resposne would be "fuck off" and then if there was pressure, publisize the issue to create political blow-back. It's insanely stupid. Now, asking for assistance in making the country more attractive to R&D oriented off-shoring, well, that's more sexy and politically doable. Directed investment? Go to fucking France for that - of course France is so bloody hypocritical they'd make the poor sad bastards sign 18 different useless fucking bureaucratic compacts that would be utterly inapplicable, fund the compacts in theoretical Euros and then let the sad bastards figure out that there was no way to actually in reality fucking access the goddamned facilities.

(For the model, see the famed Euro Med Cooperation agreements, engineered by that mistress of elegant hypocrisy, La France, espece de sale putain)

The most painful part of this little charade was their absolute sincerity. I'm almost charmed by sneaky corruption trying to get some more dumb Foreign Assistance money into Ministerial budgets, to fund the Mercedes budget. But utter sincere cluelessness really fucking pains me.

The MENA Governments still remain largely afraid and clueless about free markets or non-Dirigist systems. Of course the ex-French colonies have that disease extra bad, but it's present everywhere in MENA, throttling off growth, enterprise, and ambition in the populace.

Sadly, even the well-motivated and sincere are sucked into the mentality.

I almost laughed out-loud when they cited their participation in some monstrously complex French style all EU entrepreneurship promotion bureaucratic bastardised mess of "Innovation Promotion" nonsense project, noting they had almost as many projects as the UK.

What the bloody fuck are the thinking? Of course UK doesn't participate in this mosntrous waste of taxpayer Euros, UK gets 50% of all Europe's private venture capital financing, by market drivers alone (of course certainly some of that actually is Irish, and continental VC money finding a nice cozy London home for domiciliation purposes I am sure, haven't given it a close look). They don't need some monstrous parasitic waste of resources to "promote" innovation (doing nothing of the sort).

Learn from the English(*), you stupid Euro-besotted whinging Arabo-Himar bastards! Not the bloody French (in business of course, in other areas, such as food, cafes, wine.... well almost everything but business, learning from the English is positively idiotic - as anyone who's had what pretends to be a baguette in Cairo knows).

* The English cited simply for the Arab Med basin's obsession with Europe.