this interview because the last time i think we were in an office and the office just isn't as much fun we're coming out there would be out on a summer day like today if we don't have to do a lot of pressing to get people to do that the thing that dad said to us it was time to talk with john again was the fact that you were in egypt just a short time before the government fell tell us just a little bit about about that trip and then we're going to come back to it a little later well  you as you know it's move people to stick their necks out for the common good we would do it in this country for thirty years and what i'm doing now is taking the giraffe he was project its themes as visions as programs to other countries especially those where where we think there's a real need for the hope and inspiration and political trainings that we offer so egypt was a perfect case in point i mean you had the revolution to have years ago the country our view of a sense of i don't know what might be called of vision or progress for the country my own egyptian friends were telling me that so after a lot of emailing back and forth with my egyptian friends i decided that that would be our next  locus our next plan to start a giraffe project to do it in egypt we would start giraffe heroes egypt trying to do in egypt what we've done in this country which is to find that country's own heroes going back in their case five thousand years and then to tell the stories of these heroes egyptians men women and children who have stuck their necks out to do things for the good of the nation or their own communities and lord knows there was plenty of opportunity for people to take risks but a lot of the risks were simply moving to talk to people different than themselves for example it was really hard and really risky for a moderate islamic politician to talk to a christian politician  work a secular politician to talk to a far right islam is politics where everything is based on religion a lot of it is based on religion it's a very religious country it amazed just walking the streets of  cairo that i don't know perhaps eighty percent of the women wore the scarf that he did mean that they were necessarily fundamentalist islamic but it didn't mean that they were observant muslims ok let's stop right there because i want to come back to egypt in depth but first for those who don't know john graham you've been traveling the world virtually your entire life as we talk to libyan revolutionaries via congorilla being jailed in iran and that was the all before he worked for the state department right most of it now i i guess i got started when i was seventy and i went to see as a as a ordinary sea without a freighter saving for the far east when i was seventeen years old and coming out of the coma washington i mean i had a classic you know middle class upbringing in tacoma washington that i'd never been on any kind of adventure before all of a sudden i found myself in this phrase there were these fifty tough guys on this freighter who were determined that my education was severely want to go all the things they thought was important so you can imagine i learned a lot of that that initial summer and i got hooked i got hooked on adventure and it it wasn't all a good thing i'm going to be careful to say that i got so hooked on adventure that nothing else mattered nothing else mattered but the adrenaline flows and a lot of never been repeated i have checked around the world which is were you said i was jailed in iran well yes part of that i spent three days in the iranian jail and it was one adventure after the other well that seems to be a bit better some of the congress seems to be a bit denser some libyan revolutionaries that seems to be a bit adventuresome as well i was on the foreign service because i realized that not being independently wealthy that i wanted to be an adventurer i had to have someone pay me to do it that sounds a little cynical perhaps i shouldn't have said that but the foreign service was you know it obvious thing to do so i passed the exams and got into the foreign service and i didn't get into the part of the foreign service  clothes and parades around embassies in london and paris my beat in the foreign service was jungles and deserts arms sales i laugh now arms sales i want to make sure that i  say fire aircraft and whatever and i laugh now because a lot of people who are my dear friends now were picketing people like be in the now anyway that's what it was that i was doing  and and and i it just sort of like i got my perspective i think got lost i ended up and revolution in libya which was exciting enough i was there when moon market da feet came to power in one thousand nine hundred sixty nine in fact i did the first b graphic reports on the guy but after that it was the war in vietnam and and there was a real comeuppance then because now i wasn't a kid anymore and i was the middle of a shooting war and people were dying or living because of decisions that i was making yet i was in vietnam not as a patriot not even as a soldier i was there is a civilian and and i was just there for for the adventure of it and to some extent the power because because i was good at my job i was going up rapidly in the ranks of the foreign service but there was no moral context to it now that on metal context of being a diplomat there was no moral context and what i was doing which was being in a dangerous place with the power of life and death and yet not really giving a damn who won i didn't go where there is a patriot i didn't go in there i thought the war was lost from the beginning but it was the only war we had it was my adventure that's what i meant by moral quandary and it wasn't tell the terrible battle in a way in in one thousand nine hundred seventy one the so called easter offensive it's in the history books i won't go into it except that it was i was in a place where where i i had to order firing squad to be set up and the idea was to start shooting south vietnamese soldiers who had deserted run away from the battle and yet these desserts were young farm boys who had been dragged off their patties just weeks before they were innocent and yet that's what i was doing and it suddenly hit me that i shouldn't be there i shouldn't be making these decisions i wasn't qualified to make these decisions and it was the sort of long dark night of the so really coming to grips with the fact that adventure was great but if it had no moral context then it was not so great so i gradually begin to climb out the other side of that and and and i think  last years of my life last thirty years or so have taken my un verd venture in the fact that i'm pretty good at it in the trying to make the world a better place working primarily with the giraffe heroes projects and most recently as you said i goin egypt and trying to help people there create a stable and prosperous democracy well let's talk about egypt then were let's go fast forward now to i guess it was may two thousand and thirteen you were in egypt it's interesting when i went there first of all i was warned not to go there there the no kidding no kidding right the embassy was warning american citizens even my egyptian friends were saying you know john this is you know what's about to hit the fan over here and if you're here in the wrong place the wrong time it could be a serious mistake for you but of course was it was an invitation to me given my background so i went over to egypt and i found that i was i teachers trying to figure out what was going on in egypt beyond the news beyond c n n and i was perfectly safe i even got caught up in a demonstration in tahrir square not a huge one but but a demonstration you know which side where you won that  well i wasn't on any side i was just there talking to people and then all of a sudden this crowd of people came storming out of a side street with their banners and everything and i couldn't get out of the way so i decided to join them but i i just i think it was morsi protest but mostly it was a food protest and i thought well ok that's a go i'll join that protest so i hung out with the demonstrators for an hour or so and they were actually sorry to see me go so  had i had no problems and what i did have was a remarkable experience in talking to a number of really brave and creative people so i came away from egypt with a lot more hope than when i went there mostly because the people what security police they want modest prosperity they want to job they they want gas prices that are inspiring through the roof they want chanced of looking forward to a few sure where their children and grandchildren might grow up and go to college and become i don't know experts and this or that didn't they have a revolution about those same things a couple of years ago they did they did and when they threw out  mubarak in two thousand and eleven it was almost reminiscent of something that happened in this country they they were talking about hope and change and when they've thrown out with barak a man who'd been their strongman their dictator for thirty seven years  using the army says provide the muscle to keep everything keep everything the way you wanted it when they threw him out they really thought that they created that change but they had not they had not because strong segment of a fairly fundamentalist muslims they are organized mostly going to group called the muslim brotherhood to their rights even further right than the muslim brotherhood is another group called the sala fists who are their right wing and these people would like to create a theocracy in egypt or at least something like saudi arabia where for example women can't drive and and such so called sharia law is  educated they probably have a decent infrastructure they have a decent infrastructure the illiteracy rate is is is remarkably high especially in the capital city when people from the united states in the western world have been traveling to cairo for four years for generations because of what they have there yes but that's stopped now has it well the travel of people of not americans to egypt as has stopped because of the danger are the people i mean the people that you saw there on the streets of cairo that were did you see the military as well yes and the military when i was there were  were not is so much in evidence were there was no military violence i saw no military violence as the military in this instance they were this year's revolutionaries right yes and no the business of  what's going on in egypt is so darn complicated but basically what happened was the muslim brotherhood after the two thousand and eleven elections there was a two thousand and eleven coup mubarak is thrown out the army steps in and says we're going to keep the lid on this for six months while you guys organize an election in the constitution they did that there was an election which most people said was fair but the only people organized to win elections were the muslim brotherhood this is the group as i said before that many of whom would like to tear in egypt into something approaching a theocracy or at least something like saudi arabia the secularists didn't want that but they were poorly organized so they lost the election muslim brotherhood elects the president and instead of reaching out to try to create a government of national unity to understand that at least for a while there they had to work together with other  dismissive of the needs of the rest of the people who were not part of his muslim based party so he quickly became very unpopular in egypt and that started the rumblings  that grew into the christian do that came to a head last june thirtieth when he in fact was thrown out the army came back in it's really funny because that isn't funny but the army now is playing a very similar it played two and a half years ago when it came in at a separate of the warring parties and says we're going to take control of the country while you guys try to sort out a civilian government and that's what's now happened there's an interim prime minister elections will be scheduled in six months they're going to try again we're in the united states like to use the word democracy and put it up on a pedestal that's far beyond what reality is in other countries can we here in the united states expect called developing world they think we think is better than having a strong man or a dictator or whatever so in egypt once they threw out mubarak they had what were nor were guarded widely as free and fair elections so we would applaud a wonderful egypt has elections everything that was wonderful what was and what happened is as i was explaining earlier the democracy is more than just winning elections in only one class of society the muslim brotherhood they're one party rather had any skill at politicking so they won the election but it turned out they weren't very fit to govern so our right to democracy works well yes but no so now you have now you have the curious phenomenon where the secular politicians the demo small d democrats are applauding a military coup and it's like you shake your mean you guys should be against military coups well no not really because the last time we had an election we elected someone that turned out to be not at all what we wanted and so we want him thrown out and that the ar applaud them so now we're back to what is debacle in egypt it certainly isn't the same thing that we're used to in this country it's very complicated it sounds very complicated as so i'm going to ask you because you were there would you rather heroes who are the heroes over there i think the heroes in egypt are are mostly people who are willing to reach out in a deeply polarized society to people that don't believe what they believe to people who are of another faith and say look i don't agree with you guys but we're going to you know we're in a handbasket unless we work together so i'm reaching out to you let's see if we can make the trains run on time let's see if we can make the economy work let's see if we can organize a government that works for the good of the people  solve some of the social and economic problems we've got yes we'll fight on elections you think that i think that but we've got to do it and you know the parallels with this country are some people criticized me saying you think egypt is like the united states well the tea party and the liberal left in america huge split only we at least have a constitution and two hundred years of history was some hope that we might actually work things out in egypt that doesn't exist they have two thousand years of history of not working things out well they have even more two thousand you go back to the initial realms of the pharaohs i all top down autocracy and then you had military dictatorships ending with mubarak so i guess that's that's my main question can we in the west expect people to move from generations thousands probably of generations of of an autocracy to move into where the people are in control overnight know and i just remind americans friends those of us there remember our grade school history that it took thirteen years for us after our revolution before we finally wrote a constitution we realize that the art of the initial government we thought we would work in seven hundred seventy six didn't work at all and then it took another what sixty seventy years and we fought a civil war to again reshape the country and reshape the way we would live together so that the egyptians who have virtually no history in making a democracy work and no history and writing and living a constitution should not manage to get it perfect in three years a it's probably to be expected  there's lots of countries i'd like to talk with you about and we we're not going to have time but i want to talk about tibet there is some talk about that is because there are so many people that don't understand the when we're driving on the highway and all of a sudden we see a bumper sticker that says free tibet and we're wondering what is that about what is that about he were that you wrote about in your blog a few years ago i did and i again i was lucky to get it into tibet the chinese are very very nervous about tibet they've as you your listeners know they've taken over the country decades ago and ruled it ever since with an iron fist why i mean it's not like on top of the world well it's interesting you have to go back again a long long time i won't do it but i mean it tibetans and chinese have been fighting for well over a thousand years sometimes the power is just one way sometimes the other right now clearly tibet wants to bit as that buffer and they want to control tibet they think people are going to climb up over the mountains of tibet into china i mean i don't get it well it's a very good question they are fearful partly because of the thousand years of history partly modern progressive forward looking country and then all these shots came in from tibet chinese troops beating up to ben's in the streets and tibetan monks immolating said them because of the attacks on their chinese diplomat would would look it would not look too closely at who i was or do any research on so i worked worked but i still had to get permissions from five different chinese ministries including the secret police and the army and everybody else and i did so and i would to my great surprise i ended up flying into from katmandu and then to my even greater surprise got permission to travel overland throughout the whole tibetan plateau and then back down overland to katmandu so i was then the bet and in the capital and then in the high in the hinterlands for over a week making  copious notes taking as many pictures as i thought i could get away with stuffing the notes in my shoes because i knew the chinese would search me at the border and when i saw me what was i writing down in those notes well i i believe in my blog i call of the cultural genocide very strong words but i think they're accurate the chinese have pumped an enormous amounts of money in this tibet so you have this strange picture you walk in do you come in from the airport in la and it looks like you're in a phoenix suburb you know parks and beautiful streets and you know not much pollution and you know well dressed people a few hundred yards beyond th s for example i was able to call home on my cell phone from eighteen thousand feet on mount everest because the chinese have put so cell phone towers every place in the country including ones that would make tibetans who are quite happy to have all this but they're not happy with the fact that they have almost no freedoms and they they are the self government of tibet is a sham the chinese run everything  weapons once we started driving every twenty miles or so there'd be a police checkpoint where people would go through my permissions and passports and stuff and i had a minder by the way my driver was also my minder and if i want to talk to  mind oh sorry someone that had to report back to the chinese government i could take my computer with me but if i started typing anything that went beyond the sky is blue all of a sudden  happening was so obvious i didn't have to do any anything you know submarine eant to see it but the chinese are trying they're trying to kill the bettas with kindness but they're also doing it with a very  strict police state apparatus but realistically the tibetans are on their own because the west is not going to come to their defense no we are not we have too many important fish to fry if you will on our overall relationship with the chinese so we may irk the chinese by receiving the dalai lama in the white house or whatever but we're not going to go beyond that it's one of those cases where real politic is this what's going to happen  i got an hour's worth of questions and thirty seconds left are there heroes in tibet yes there are heroes in tibet and there are people who are willing to stand up to was happening and to get the word out about the chinese are doing i mean you  can you can look at what's happening in tibet if you look if you're if you're blinded or want to be blinded you can see that you can believe the chinese propaganda but the bet is need to tell the world that it is not what's happening john thank you very much