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"Why invite a controversial lama who wears saffron robes and Gucci shoes to Taiwan to put on a show?"

Not everyone back in Cairo is happy about the obsession with golf courses. Professor of Landscape and Architecture at Cairo University, Mohammad Refaat says they are a status symbol and the game doesn't come naturally to Egyptians

Mohammad Refaat: The first golf course that was created in these new developments was in Katameya Heights. It started - why is that? Because we started to have the Japanese in Egypt. The Japanese, they love golf, and we have several firms with Japanese managers, so it became a luxury to provide the service for them. But I believe that we're never going to be golfers as Egyptians, and I don't know, it's irritating now, because whenever you go, whenever you get a project, even in my private office, they say, 'Ah, the golf', and then we start doing the compound. The main idea of the golf from the owners' point of view is that to provide value for the people so that he can start to sell.

Mohammad Refaat: The thing is that I feel that we are Westernising ourselves. The thing is that due to the effect of the media, everybody wants to live in a Dallas, or in a Falconcrest or one of these things that we used to see when we're kids.

And they did not understand the Egyptian culture. If I speak about myself, I'd rather live in what we call the hara, or the alley, the old alley that we have, you know, when you have people all living in one street, of having all the services in the street, what we call the philosophy of the extended family. This is very, very Egyptian.

Anwar Sadat

opened up the country to the world, and very significantly, for the first time, all Egyptians could travel overseas.

Egyptians from all classes went abroad to get jobs in Gulf countries. They came back with money and with an appetite for things like shopping and luxury living. Some also brought back new ideas about Islam. It was more conservative and fundamentalist.

teachers, engineers, medical doctors, peasants, the large peasant migration

get passports, go and work in Jordan, in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, come back. Some of them also in Saudi Arabia perhaps never ever encountering women, right? And coming back with new notions of segregation, of headscarf, of Islamisation

Hagar Cohen: In Cairo today more and more women are segregated and wear the burqa, which is the full head and body cover. But everyone likes the shopping, and the new and glitzy malls are full of people in all kinds of dress

It can be uncomfortable now for women in western clothes, who don't wear scarves, because conservative men and women clearly show their distaste. This mix between consumerism and a very religious lifestyle is sometimes known as 'petro Islam'

Mona Abaza: They have different notions and variations of Islamic ideologies. There is a difference between a 16-year-old kid who is out of a family of 10 living in a slum, and a schoolteacher who lives long years in Saudi Arabia comes back, very much influenced by what I call the petro Islamic ideology, Saudi Arabian consumerists, very much into conservative accommodationist kind of religion, enjoying a shopping mall but at the same time dressing in Islamic code for instance. So marrying certain forms of consumer culture, but giving it a flavour that can look Egyptian, so that you convince yourself that you are different.

the gated communities inside. the more upmarket, the faster they're selling, and they have names like Beverley Hills, Hyde Park and Dreamland.

Another kind of cultural reference for all of this is old Egyptian movies from like the 1950s you know, black-and-white films, where the setting was very, very often the Pasha's villa, which always had a very grand staircase, and a very grand entrance. This is the sort of lifestyle that Egyptians haven't had access to since the 1950s because of the crowding and so on and so forth. So now it's sort of become a lifestyle option for wealthy Egyptians that wasn't really there. So you can now have your own Pasha's villa.

Hagar Cohen: Dina Hussanein says she isn't comfortable living in a place with a name like 'Beverly Hills'. Dina Hassanein: That's a very sad thing, because we have a remarkable history and civilisation and yet, you know, we can't think of any Arabic word of our own that we could use to name the places. So I can tell you, Beverly Hills Egypt is nothing like Beverly Hills California

Hagar Cohen: Dina Hassanein is a modern woman. She lives on her own, and has a fiancé who lives nearby. She is very beautiful and smartly dressed in Western clothes. She has a job which involves interaction with all sorts of people

Hagar Cohen: Dina Hassanein and other residents have to rely on Old Cairo for almost everything, including shops, restaurants, and health services. There are also no local street markets, little shops or stalls, or workshops. In some places, the rules even forbid them. Big supermarket chains can be found easily, but you have to drive to get to them

Said Sadek: And you have rulers who believe in gated communities. Mubarak himself, lives in Sharem el Sheik or Borg el Arab, isolated, always isolated. The ruling elite in Egypt are isolated. And so you can tell by this political orientation of the elite that this is what they want, an isolated community because they cannot meet the demands of the masses. There are 40% of Egyptians below poverty line, earning less than $2 a day. And so this abject poverty amidst people who have a lot of money, may drive people to be envious

Very poor quality housing found in slums and shanty towns is expanding in Cairo

r Cohen: What in terms of sewage and garbage services? Are they available? Manal Tibe: We are talking about no water, so don't talk about sewage and garbage

Hagar Cohen: Manal Tibe says that the government isn't doing anything to improve conditions in slums, but has been very generous to private developers of gated communities. The desert land is subsidised by the government as well as the price of fuel, electricity and water. And that makes expenses in gated communities very low.

Manal Tibe: More hatefulness from poor to rich people and also to the government. Now, poor people that they want revenge, and this is being interpreted in some crimes against rich people.

Hagar Cohen: Dina Hassanein is missing city life, but at the same time she says that she doesn't fit in there any more

Dina Hassanein: It's not that I don't want to live there, it's just that our realities are very different, the places that we go are very different. If I were to walk into a slum I might get torn apart. You can't just walk in wearing normal clothes like we do into a place like that. I can barely walk down the streets without getting harassed actually, because it's a much more conservative society, so it's just different, it's almost impossible for these worlds to intermingle.

Hagar Cohen: These two very different worlds are on display inside some of Cairo's shopping malls. Western music there is piped through just as it is in any Australian city. This shopping mall is in the suburb of Giza. It's one of the most exclusive ones in Cairo. There's a care there serving Caesar salads and cappuccinos. Just across the road is the Giza Zoo, which is a popular hanging out venue for poorer families

This shopping mall

It's only a few days before Christmas when we're here, and in this Muslim country, it's ironic that Christian carols are playing throughout the atrium. Mona Abaza: It's a mix of definitely well-to-do Egyptians, and lots of expatriates, foreigners coming. You can see the Christmas decoration. During Ramadan they make Ramadan decorations, tents and Islamic style, and in Christmas they put Christmas decorations

Mona Abaza: There is this idea that the old downtown city is now slowly being depopulated by its, let us say, middle class. It used to be a very important commercial centre. It is now losing out this significance, because the centres have been now little by little moving out. So the idea is to get out of the city, because as if it's the inside is rotten, and it's very interesting how the poor can easily look at the lifestyles of the rich. Now this is evidently a bit of a problem for the rich, so that is why they opted for the American Dream, which is getting out and walling off.

Mona Abaza: If you look at it just visually, the problem is slums. One can easily say that the view is that as if the whole of Cairo is consisting of slums. Now the past 20 years, the neo liberal ideology of the government is to try and handle the problem of slums, and the way they handle it is as if it's an evil, a cancer that has to be drastically eliminated, with violence, because they consider and they believe that in slums, that we have the breeding of terrorist ideology, Islamist, poverty, violence etc. Now all this is quite often very over-exaggerated. I mean it's a form of discriminating the poor, that's clear. But you have the issue also of the city now experiencing a new form of cleaning up geared towards of course the encouraging of tourism and sites of consumption. So the cityscape is taking place as a huge space for consumer culture and tourism

Hagar Cohen: The American University, where Professor Abaza lectures, has also moved out to the desert and is now based in a town called New Cairo. She says it's a bad move, because a whole generation of well-off young people will be isolated, away from historical Cairo or the old Egyptian culture

Mona Abaza: You might be astonished but my students, 18 years old, 19 years, have never for instance known anything about downtown, have never even gone to downtown.

You will find the American fast food and the Egyptian fast food, and Italian, Mexican. Upstairs there is a McDonald's and Kentucky

Towheid Wahab: There is a rule here in the University. There's no mosque, there's no church, there's no temple, there's no monastery. All the people here are equal to do their religion by their own

Max Roderbeck: There are good reasons why they want to move, because you get a nice amount of space, you can re-brand yourself with a new image of being something that looks very modern instead of something that's fitted into a shabby old neighbourhood. There's certainly a trend, I mean there are quite a lot of institutions that have moved out.

Max Roderbeck: The danger of Cairo being hollowed out is pretty real. And I mean, some of the things that a city needs to be vibrant, seem to be already been pulled out of the centre of Cairo. I've seen other places where downtown becomes either a hollow shell, or ends up just being a sort of transport hub, you know, a sort of junction of roads and things. And I think it's a very real danger with Cairo.

Hagar Cohen: Somehow, Cairo has always managed to function as a lively city, says Max Roderbeck, but this time around, things are different

These satellite towns were developed in this way because of the government's quick sale of the land to private hands. They wanted to make a return quickly, and big villas and golf courses were in demand. But they don't work as lively urban centres, says environmental architect, Abbas el Zafarany

the documentary The 10 Conditions of Love, about Ms Kadeer

Ms Kadeer will take part in the screening of the documentary next Saturday.She will also meet members of Australia’s 2000-strong Uighur community.

Her involvement in the festival led to seven Chinese-language films — from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan — being withdrawn.

‘‘This latest attack is just extraordinary,’’ the festival director said. ‘‘What’s happened is that this has become a question of Chinese nationalism where it has almost become people’s official duty to register a protest.’’

Loach's

The role of political actors, and the nation state in particular, in the film industry is enormous.

the film appears as the product of an individual visionary. This view of filmmaking is about as realistic as the standard Hollywood happy ending. The reality is that films are rarely, if ever, the personal, unadulterated vision of a director. They are influenced or, depending on your point of view, compromised from the start by those who bankroll the films.

what gets far less attention is the extensive role played by political actors in the filmmaking process.

In some respects, the most surprising thing about these kerfuffles is not that they have happened, but that they don't happen more often. While most of us think of film festivals as cultural events, the truth is that they are also deeply political events.

most films would not be made were it not for generous state subsidies.

And in spite of nice-sounding claims about facilitating cultural dialogue, nation states don't fund films because they love a good story. They do so because film can be a highly effective means of spreading influence. Since they're footing the bill, it's understandable that they want a say in the content of the film and how it is positioned.

films and film festivals are the continuation of politics by other means. It shouldn't be imagined that this applies only to authoritarian states such as China or political organisations with clear political objectives. Nearly every Australian film is made with some public money, and so filmmakers are subject to similar, if far more sophisticated and subtle, forms of state influence.

China has miscalculated the extent of its reach and, in the process, provided both the Kadeer documentary and the film festival an avalanche of publicity. And Ken Loach, in remarkably poor political judgment, has effectively silenced himself by withdrawing his film.

The controversy brought a wave of local and international publicity. MIFF has been a fixture in the news pages and on the radio. The overseas coverage included mentions in The New Yorker, a live interview with CNN and coverage on the BBC. The attention, Mr Moore hopes, might have a flow-on effect, a reminder to people that this is an important festival. The festival had already become the subject of news stories when director Ken Loach withdrew his feature film, Looking for Eric, because of MIFF sponsorship by the Israeli Government.

"It's a very, very concerted and pointed attack," Mr Moore said. "Everyone's watching this - it's totally global." The email provides instructions for loading tickets into "shopping carts" from the festival's website, and Chinese are being urged to teach others how to "purchase" MIFF tickets online.

"We need to understand different cultures and perspectives as part of how we do business and relate," says Mr Campbell. "So there's actually a public good in all of this."

Many Americans have heard of guanxi, but it's often translated wrongly to mean relationships with powerful people

Guanxi means something very different from the American concept of connections.

It means being in a social circle where you can let your guard down a little, because there is deep trust, perhaps from generations of coexistence, living in the same neighborhoods or even with interwoven family relations.

Long-term perspective is very important in China. A defaulting borrower should avoid saying he won't pay and instead pay a little right away and explain that he is hurting but will make good in the future. You cannot rely on bankruptcy to absolve debts.

ou need to know that relying on the law to avoid making payments to Chinese businesses doesn't usually work

To be successful long term, your company must have strong contracts and good legal advice, but it also needs to understand the importance of relationships, and nurture those as well.

tand up and take back our dignity and our values and our self respect," said Christy. "It's great that we have seen this resurgence in etiquette and manners and self respect

studies has shown that "85 percent of the reason a person gets a job, keeps a job and moves up is related to their people skills.

Manners are the great equalizer and if you have manners you can walk into any business or social situation

The hunt for evidence against Japan in its "scientific hunt" for whales became highly contentious when the crew of the environmental crusader ship Sea Shepherd was accused of piracy and violence after activists threw bottles of "acid" and boarded a Japanese whaling ship.

Tokyo wants to ensure Mr Rudd's first trip to Japan as Prime Minister is positive and concentrates on climate change and potential joint regional aid projects rather than whaling and the perceived snub in his failure to include Japan on last month's 17-day world trip, which included four days in China.

In December, Australia issued a demarche, or formal diplomatic protest, on behalf of numerous nations over Japan's plans to cull about 900 minke whales and 50 fin whales.

It is estimated that Australia's "evidence gathering" to form a case against Japanese whalers in an international court, which included the voyage of the Oceanic Viking and aerial surveillance, cost taxpayers more than $1 million. The Rudd Government has been "considering" the evidence for three months and has still not made a decision.

pro-Chinese to the point of being anti-Japanese.

"agree to disagree on whaling".

The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister have signalled they want an end to the diplomatic row with Japan although they still vigorously oppose whaling.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Andrew Robb said yesterday Mr Rudd had to calm relations between Australian and Japan. Mr Robb said Mr Rudd's perceived "China bias" had caused concerns in Indonesia, Japan and India.

Mr Robb said the Prime Minister had sent a "gun boat" after Japanese whaling ships without picking up the phone to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.