I just found out that foreigners in Cairo are supposed to be keeping a "low profile" on account of some ongoing demonstrations. Oops! Clearly that's not what I was doing when I took the following picture today:



I don't know the full story yet (and perhaps never will) but apparently the Egyptian government has done some bad stuff restricting the independence of judges, and people are upset and it got violent last night. So they sent the riot police out in force today to keep order.

There wasn't much at all going on today, as far as I could tell. I heard some mild chanting, but you couldn't even get within blocks of the High Court. There were long lines of bored-looking riot cops everywhere.

I did notice, at one point in the long line of riot cops, a string of un-uniformed roughs who I can only assume (from my experience observing the "elections," ahem, in Alexandria in November) were petty criminals swept up off the street last night by the local police. When the shit starts to go down, they're the ones sent in to bash heads. No joke.

Hold on. I just looked at the picture close up. That's them, just to the right of the orange guy's head.

Anyway, in honor of the Egyptian quasi-hipster dude on the right side of the frame (who had nothing to do with any demonstrations, seriously) I'm currently listening to Sonic Youth's "Teen-Age Riot."