I tend to agree with much of what you say and find your insight on domestic matters to be very conducive to reaching a better understand of Egyptian culture and society. I was fortunate to visit Egypt once in my life on a vacation trip originating Moscow. That was a year before the events of 9/11. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life and it produced tremendous respect for the people of Egypt. I was shaken down by two police officers and one man with a camel at the pyramids. My wife and I agreed to be photographed using our camera for five bucks in front of the camel. The two officers offered to be in the photo and we course obliged.
Then when it was time to pay I handed the man five bucks but he told me it was twenty. Five for him five for the camel and five for each officer. When we got home the photos cut off half of our faces anyway. I found the deal to worth it for the story.
So hang around if you can since I want to follow up in your recent posts but I am quite busy for the next few days with a deadline coming up on Tuesday.
Sorry about your incident with the camel photo.
The camel men are thieves
Now the camels and horses are kept behind a barrier and more under control and are not allowed to hassle tourists.
I live 10 minutes from Pyramids and visited plateau a few months ago myself and saw them all in a special area behind rope on top of plateau above Cheops pyramid. The sellers also have been moved to a special area and to stop them following tourists. It’s better now
Not for them because they are starving but for tourists.
Could you get any more clueless or debate in worse faith? The President is the Commander in Chief of the United States armed services. All of them. Not just the Army, not just the Navy, all of them. Eisenhower held the rank of General of the Army (a 5 star general for the uninitiated) and at the height of his military career held the position of Army Chief of Staff. This placed him nominally in charge of the Army, however not only was his commander in chief the president, take a look at this: Chief of Staff of the United States Army:
Bolding mine. Note that the Chief of Staff is the deputy to the Secretary of Defense, yet another civilian position, and that Chief of Staff is an administrative position, the CoS does not have operational control of the Army.
So for the third or forth time, Eisenhower went from holding a position in the Army which he held at the pleasure of the Commander in Chief which made him administratively, not operationally, in control of the Army with two layers of civilians above him in his chain of command while a General of the Army to becoming the Commander in Chief and a civilian upon assuming the office of the Presidency.
You never clicked on the link in the first place, did you? Tell you what, give it a try. It’s a link to a section in wiki, which like most of wiki has footnotes and citations of where the information came from, usually hyperlinks. Yes, it’s what I’d call a cite; it’s also one that you are simply too lazy or disingenuous to actually look at. You were questioning the veracity of my cite when if you had bothered to look you’d have found that it itself cites the source of its information. Trying to come up with this convoluted story which makes it abundantly clear that you still haven’t actually looked at the link I provided and now accusing me of debating in bad faith is the height of irony.
Nice concession that you made up my claiming it was in the Constitution out of whole cloth. Oh wait, there you go debating in bad faith again, now claiming that Trinopus claimed it was in the Constitution. Try reading what he wrote again, he never claimed it was in the Constitution either.
Yes, and at the time the constitution was ratified, only white male landowners were allowed to vote in some places. Unless you can point to some gross election fraud and intimidation, it seems to me that you can’t really impeach the results of the election other than to say that the results would have been less lopsided if the muslim brotherhood folks didn’t boycott an election they were going to lose anyway.
That’s somewhere between racist and conspiracy theory crazy. Trust me when i say that if such an infiltration existed, it would be running 24/7 on fox news (the conservative (crypto-racist) news channel.
ETA: I have some Egyptian friends who see this as the end of a blossoming democratic movement and a return to the bad old days of military dictatorship and I have some Egyptian friends who think that undermining the influence of religious sects (especially ones that want to impose their beliefs and practices on others) is far more important to the democracy than undermining the most powerful, respected, longest lasting institution in the country.
Is the military leadership in Egypt drawn from a small subsector of the population or do they come from all religious and socioeconomic backgrounds?
Well the last 4 Field Marshalls have been poor to working class.
Nassers father was a postman
Sadat was from a poor family and his mother was Nubian
Tantawy came from a poor Nubian family
Sisi came from a family whose father was a bazaar man in Khan Al Khalili bazaar making and selling things to tourists.
I think some were defending bloggers who were arrested on this thread???
Here is a Tweet from probably one of the top 3 most famous bloggers Ala’a Abdel Fattah who was mentioned a few pages back who was arrested.
He’s been linked to allying with the MB and to getting Western support and financing for protests and Human Rights orgs and NGO’s are constantly putting him in the headlines for Western audiences.
Not sure if anyone saw much of the 25th Celebrations yesterday but I do know that BBC, AJE and AJM, CNN barely mentioned them.
The entire country practically was out celebrating the ouster of the MB. From Matrouh to Sharm from Cairo the Aswan from Luxor to Alex. It looked a bit like the celebrations for Nasser. Massive scale. The main theme was the execution of the MB, the Gen Sisi for president, No more foreign journalists reporting lies in Egypt. Message to Obama: “You are either with us or with the terrorists” in reference to Obama supporting the MB.
The scenes were even bigger than 25th January 2011 ones in Tahrir after Mubarak was ousted. By the nightime the Tahrir could not hold any more people. Etihadeya was full capacity and there were stages with dancers and musicians in the major cities. Sufi dancers and all the different areas dancers and them singing etc.
The bombing the day before just made even more people go out in the streets in defiance.
We are looking at I am sure Sisi ( if he runs) to be president of Egypt. No one after yesterday can compete with the love for that Army leader. No one.
Americans ignorance of the love Egyptians have for their army is a problem. They think we are all alike. What they are doing in other countries like Syria and Libya and Iraq with the help of jihadists will not be allowed to happen in Egypt.
America not supporting General Sisi and the people ousting Morsi and MB will have lasting effects.
Egyptians will not forget who was with them the people and who was with the jihadist terrorists and suicide bombers.
Also, so what, it’s a photo. We have the video of the Iraqi people pulling down statues of Saddam Hussein. It might have been a genuine popular resentment against him…or it might have been staged by paid actors. By itself, it tells us nothing. I can easily obtain pictures of people hugging posters with images of…well, just about anyone, from Chairman Mao to Skeletor.
True, but beyond that, I could show videos of Saddam Hussein hugging Iraqi Jews, claiming the Jews of Iraq were loved and respected and then a clip of Iraqi Jews holding AKs and claiming they hated “Zionists” and wanted to defend their country against “the Zionist entity” yet I’m reasonably sure you wouldn’t find such videos strong evidence that the stories you’ve heard from Iraqi Jews in Israel were false.
Ive said from the start that the path to democracy in Egypt would surely have to run through a period of military rule. That’s becsuse the military has shown to be made up of more secular minded Egyptians. Our journalists haven’t quite figured that out in full yet. But I feel like some are starting to get it,
