Quotulatiousness

July 1, 2013

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood HQ attacked

Filed under: Middle East — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:40

In the Guardian, Patrick Kingsley reports on the latest troubles in Cairo:

The headquarters of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood have been burned and ransacked following an all-night siege — one day after millions protested on Egypt’s streets calling for President Mohamed Morsi’s resignation.

In an episode reminiscent of the sacking of Hosni Mubarak’s political headquarters during Egypt’s 2011 uprising, around 50 anti-Brotherhood protesters spent the night attacking the compound — situated on a rocky, isolated outcrop in east Cairo — with molotov cocktails, causing a series of small fires and explosions.

With police nowhere to be seen, Brotherhood cadres returned fire, killing at least four, and injuring at least 80 — according to medics at the scene.

Both sides told the Guardian that the other had started the battle, which began at around 7pm on Sunday. It was not possible to verify either claim.

At roughly 7am, after 12 hours of fighting, Brotherhood reinforcements arrived — possibly, bystanders said, because one of the fires had grown too big, and those inside now feared being smoked out. The reinforcements covered their colleagues’ exit with live fire — the Guardian later saw bullets being plucked from the wall. Bystanders said that some Brotherhood members were injured and handed to the authorities during the blaze.

Update:

June 19, 2013

Examining Vermouth’s claim to being the “oldest wine in the world”

Filed under: Greece, Health, History, Italy, Middle East, Wine — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:13

History Today linked to an article in their archives from 1975 from Pamela Vandyke Price discussing the ancient provenance of Vermouth:

When the great vermouth establishments refer to their product as ‘the oldest form of wine in the world’, they are not exaggerating. If we could travel in time, we might find many of the wines praised in antiquity to be harsh, sour and coarse to our palates, but the ‘aromatized wine’ that we know as vermouth would then have existed and, even if we drank it for medicinal or preventive reasons rather than for enjoyment, we could recognise it and relate it to the vermouths of today.

Vermouth can be, and often is, made wherever wine is made. The ancient Egyptians used both wine and beer, plus juniper, frankincense, celery, lotus leaves and honey, in the treatment of certain ailments; and it is by a method of infusion, maceration, distillation, or two or all three of these processes that, essentially, vermouth is made today. In Book IV of the Odyssey, Helen throws a drug given to her by an Egyptian lady into the bowl in which the wine is to be mixed and diluted before dinner; this ‘had the power of robbing grief and anger of their sting and banishing all painful memories’ — an efficacious aperitif, assuring good digestion. At the end of the third millennium B.C. what is perhaps the first written doctor’s prescription is recorded in cuneiform script on a tablet from the Sumerian city of Nippur — a physician notes that certain powders should be infused with a type of wine.

[. . .]

Other families in the drink business were quick to see the possibilities for vermouth, setting up in Turin, Marseilles and Sete (again in proximity to mountain herbs and a quantity of wine), and in Chambray. Many of them are still family concerns, even though they are great empires of the drink business. Martini & Rossi, who were founded about 1840, replaced a much older concern making vermouths and liqueurs at Pessione, near Turin (the head of that firm was the grandfather of Giovanni Angelli, founder of Fiat); the superb museum now established alongside the Pessione installations is a necessary detour for anyone interested in the history of wine from the earliest times.

The Cinzano family began in the drink business in the sixteenth century, and in 1757 the brothers Carlo Stefano and Giovanni Giacomo were invested as Master Distillers in Turin; today their business is gigantic, including, among other things, the Florio concern at Marsala, (itself including the former cantinas of Ingham and Woodhouse). Louis Noilly, in business at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Lyons, set up in the vermouth trade with his son-in-law, Claudius Prat and they enjoyed so much success that by 1843 they moved their headquarters to Marseilles. Madame Josephine Prat, who ran the business after the deaths of the two founders, was succeeded by her two children; and her granddaughter, Vicomtesse Vigier, who entered the firm before 1939, directed it until 1970 when she died, over a hundred years old.

It seems a little odd that, with so many modifications of wine-making and changes in the tastes of drinkers, aromatized wine should still be in demand. But, in fact, it is increasingly so. Whenever people order a straight vermouth they are ordering the oldest wine in the world.

February 19, 2013

Container ships embiggen again

Filed under: Business, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:17

BBC News looks at the soon-to-be-launched Triple-E container ships:

What is blue, a quarter of a mile long, and taller than London’s Olympic stadium?

The answer — this year’s new class of container ship, the Triple E. When it goes into service this June, it will be the largest vessel ploughing the sea.

Each will contain as much steel as eight Eiffel Towers and have a capacity equivalent to 18,000 20-foot containers (TEU).

If those containers were placed in Times Square in New York, they would rise above billboards, streetlights and some buildings.

Or, to put it another way, they would fill more than 30 trains, each a mile long and stacked two containers high. Inside those containers, you could fit 36,000 cars or 863 million tins of baked beans.

The Triple E will not be the largest ship ever built. That accolade goes to an “ultra-large crude carrier” (ULCC) built in the 1970s, but all supertankers more than 400m (440 yards) long were scrapped years ago, some after less than a decade of service. Only a couple of shorter ULCCs are still in use. But giant container ships are still being built in large numbers — and they are still growing.

It’s 25 years since the biggest became too wide for the Panama Canal. These first “post-Panamax” ships, carrying 4,300 TEU, had roughly quarter of the capacity of the current record holder — the 16,020 TEU Marco Polo, launched in November by CMA CGM.

In the shipping industry there is already talk of a class of ship that would run aground in the Suez canal, but would just pass through another bottleneck of international trade — the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia and Indonesia. The “Malaccamax” would carry 30,000 containers.

Comparison of bounding box of Chinamax with some other ship sizes in isometric view. (Wikimedia)

Comparison of bounding box of Chinamax with some other ship sizes in isometric view. (Wikimedia)

September 26, 2012

Coptic Christians and “The Innocence of Muslims”

Filed under: Media, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:57

Strategy Page has an article about the history of the Copts in Egypt after the Muslim take over:

An ugly and ancient aspect of Islamic culture recently triggered violent demonstrations throughout the world. The cause was a low-budget film (“The Innocence of Moslems”) made by an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian. A minority of Moslems have always been particularly sensitive about their religion and how it should be practiced. These conservatives have gone by many names over the centuries. The most common tags these days are Salafists and Wahhabis. These fanatic minorities have exercised an influence on Islamic culture far larger than their numbers (usually less than 10-20 percent) would suggest.

[. . .]

This brings us back to “The Innocence of Moslems” and why it was created by an Egyptian Christian who had fled his homeland. He’s one of many, actually. Some 1,500 years ago most Egyptians were Christians, nearly all of them belonging to the local Coptic sects. Then the Moslems invaded in the 7th century and used threats and financial incentives to encourage conversion to Islam. After three centuries of this, Moslems were the majority. Ever since, Egyptian Moslems have sought, often with violence, to convert the remaining Egyptian Christians (currently about ten percent of the population). Some converted, but increasingly over the last century, Copts have simply fled the country. Those who left had bitter, and ancient, memories of Moslem persecution. That apparently led to making the “The Innocence of Moslems” (allegedly financed by Copts in Egypt).

In response the Egyptian government issued arrest warrants for seven Copts (including the man believed behind the film) and an American clergyman noted for his anti-Moslem attitudes. All eight are accused of having something to do with the film. This is a largely symbolic gesture, as all those being sought by the police are outside the country. Copts living outside Egypt frequently say unkind things about Egypt and Islam, but these comments are usually ignored inside Egypt. Meanwhile, a senior Pakistani government official has offered $100,000 of his own money for whoever kills the Egyptian-American man responsible for the film.

Islamic terrorism often gets explained away as being a reaction to Western imperialism, or colonialism or simply cultural differences. No one, especially in the Islamic world, wants to admit that the cause of it all is religious fanatics who would rather appear righteous than be righteous.

September 17, 2012

Volokh: When you reward certain kinds of behaviour, you get more of it

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:52

The context here is the various arms of the US government scrambling to condemn the alleged maker of the alleged film Innocence of Muslims. Eugene Volokh explains that this is actually inviting further demands for “satisfaction” on the part of the offended:

In recent days, I’ve heard various people calling for punishing the maker of Innocence of Muslims, and more broadly for suppressing such speech. During the Terry Jones planned Koran-burning controversy, I heard similar calls. Such expression leads to the deaths of people, including Americans. It worsens our relations with important foreign countries. It’s intended to stir up trouble. And it’s hardly high art, or thoughtful political arguments. It’s not like it’s Satanic Verses, or even South Park or Life of Brian. Why not shut it down, and punish those who engage in it (of course, while keeping Satanic Verses and the like protected)?

I think there are many reasons to resist such calls, but in this post I want to focus on one: I think such suppression would likely lead to more riots and more deaths, not less. Here’s why.

Behavior that gets rewarded, gets repeated. (Relatedly, “once you have paid him the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.”) Say that the murders in Libya lead us to pass a law banning some kinds of speech that Muslims find offensive or blasphemous, or reinterpreting our First Amendment rules to make it possible to punish such speech under some existing law.

What then will extremist Muslims see? They killed several Americans (maybe itself a plus from their view). In exchange, they’ve gotten America to submit to their will. And on top of that, they’ve gotten back at blasphemers, and deter future blasphemy. A triple victory.

Would this (a) satisfy them that now America is trying to prevent blasphemy, so there’s no reason to kill over the next offensive incident, or (b) make them want more such victories? My money would be on (b).

September 12, 2012

The real reason for the Cairo and Benghazi attacks

Filed under: Africa, Media, Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:44

Tim Cavanaugh on the real as opposed to claimed reason for the attacks on American diplomats in Egypt and Libya:

Mohamed al-Zawahiri, brother of al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, says he called a “peaceful protest” in Cairo as part of the 9/11 anniversary attacks on U.S. embassies that left the U.S. ambassador to Libya dead and the U.S. embassy in Egypt in shambles.

The putative cause of the attack in Cairo was anger over a satirical movie depicting the founder of Islam’s life. The attacks in the adjacent North African countries, both of which last year saw secular autocrats toppled, came on a day commemorating the Zawahiri family’s direct role in coordinated terror attacks that killed more than 3,000 people from more than 60 nations.

[. . .]

But there is no real point in rebutting Zawahiri’s stated claims about a movie. I’m not even sure the movie Innocence of Muslims exists, given that producer Sam Bacile told the Wall Street Journal it had a budget of $5 million, and that doesn’t match up with the production value in Bacile’s trailer. (Bacile’s “100 Jewish donors” seem to be the real victims here.)

The purpose of the attacks in Egypt and Libya was for the Sunni leadership to show it can unleash mob attacks against American diplomatic assets. (There may be some historical exceptions, but it’s more or less axiomatic than mob attacks cannot happen without government approval.) That point has been received by everybody except U.S. State Department employees.

June 27, 2012

John Kay on the evils of rent-seeking

Filed under: Economics, Germany, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:08

Broadly speaking, wealth can be accumulated in two distinctly different ways. It can be earned through hard work, innovation, and competition, or it can be extracted from the public by use of coercive methods, corruption, and misappropriation:

Whatever the true extent of the Mubarak family fortune, it stands in stark contrast to the lot of most Egyptians. Gross domestic product per capita in Egypt is a mere $2,500. In western Europe and North America GDP per capita is about $40,000, yet the capacities of Egypt’s intellectual and entrepreneurial elite are the rival of any state in the world.

The real damage imposed by men such as Mr Mubarak is not the money they might have stolen. The tragedy is that the system that enables them to steal it destroys opportunities for others to generate wealth — not only for themselves but for the whole population.

The price of requiring a potential Mark Zuckerberg or Mr Gates to pay a $100 bribe to each of 10 officials before he can establish his new business is not the $1,000 creamed off by corrupt bureaucrats. It is the far greater one of lost businesses that never came into being because the licensing process that makes such corruption possible was not navigated. In the meantime, people who might be successful entrepreneurs choose instead to seek political power. If business is endlessly frustrating and politics endlessly rewarding, the career choice for able and enterprising people is obvious.

Institutions are the key influence on economic prosperity — West Germany did not outperform East Germany because of its excellent monetary policies. And, as Daron Acemoglou and James Robinson point out in their book, Why Nations Fail, a critical feature of successful economic institutions is that they limit the scope for what these authors call “extractive activity” — others have described it as predation or rent-seeking — which appropriates the wealth created by other people.

June 17, 2012

The only justifications for armed intervention

Filed under: Government, History, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:12

George Jonas on the arguments being trotted out for military intervention in Syria and other hotspots:

Repeating for the record what I’ve written many times before, I think only three things justify resorting to arms: (A) self-defence, (B) treaty obligations, and (C) defending vital national interests, defined as interests that properly mandated governments on reasonable grounds honestly believe cannot be safeguarded or secured in other ways.

As far as I can see, nothing compels or even excuses belligerency except national defence obligations. Humanitarian components are icing on the cake. “Responsibility to protect” strikes me a slogan of liberal imperialism; the battle cry of post-modern civilization’s missionaries, the casus belli of self-appointed knights errant with an unquenchable thirst for running the world. Disguised as academics, adventurers, mercenaries, bureaucrats, bien-pensants and do-gooders, these 21st-century Don Quixotes consider themselves the new global aristocracy. They’re the enlightened ones, expecting to become the anointed ones before long, and rule as functionaries of various supranational bodies — governmental, non-governmental, or merely mental — in what no doubt many believe is humanity’s best interest.

[. . .]

Anyway, my main point was that the West’s moment of going off the rails in foreign policy didn’t come in the turbulent and error-prone 1960s, but in the seemingly level-headed 1950s, under the presidency of the popular wartime commander “Ike” Eisenhower. Instead of letting America’s allies, Britain, France and Israel, finish the job Egypt’s military dictator, Colonel Nasser, started when he arbitrarily nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, Eisenhower’s America, aided by Lester B. Pearson’s Canada, rescued the aggressive nationalist. As Westerners, Eisenhower and Pearson may have expected credit; what they got was contempt.

“Weren’t they allies? Westerners are people whose enmity is preferable to their friendship,” was how a Libyan I interviewed commented some years later. I don’t think we learned much since.

October 22, 2011

Egyptian Facebook comments get man jailed for three years

Filed under: Africa, Law, Religion, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:37

The “Arab Spring” may have ousted the head of state in Egypt, but it has done little to liberalize the common experience of life. Things like speaking your mind on religious topics can get you jailed:

An Egyptian court sentenced a man to three years in jail with hard labour on Saturday for insulting Islam in postings on Facebook, the official MENA news agency reported.

The Cairo court found that Ayman Yusef Mansur “intentionally insulted the dignity of the Islamic religion and attacked it with insults and ridicule on Facebook,” the agency reported.

The court said his insults were “aimed at the Noble Koran, the true Islamic religion, the Prophet of Islam and his family and Muslims, in a scurrilous manner,” the agency reported.

It did not provide details on what he had written that was deemed to be offensive.

March 6, 2011

Foreign troops in Libya?

Filed under: Africa, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:52

While some are debating the possibilities of providing troops to help the Libyan rebels, others may already be there:

The rebellion against the Kadaffi dictatorship in Libya has not produced any official outside help, but Egypt has apparently sent some of its commandos in to help out the largely amateur rebel force. Wearing civilian clothes, the hundred or so Egyptian commandos are officially not there, but are providing crucial skills and experience to help the rebels cope with the largely irregular, and mercenary, force still controlled by the Kadaffi clan. There are also some commandos from Britain (SAS) and American (Special Forces) operators are also believed wandering around, mainly to escort diplomats or perform reconnaissance (and find out who is in charge among the rebels).

The Egyptian commandos come from Unit 777, a force that was established in the late 1970s, but underwent some ups and downs in the next two decades before achieving its current form. Today, the 250-300 -man Unit 777 is a significantly improved force. They fall under the command of the Army Commando Command, both of whom are based in Cairo. Force 777 trains with the help of the German GSG-9, French GIGN, and American Delta Force commandos.

February 16, 2011

QotD: For dictators, storm troopers are not a luxury

Filed under: Government, Middle East, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:11

A major reason for the inability of the recently deposed Egyptian dictatorship to suppress anti-government demonstrations was the lack of a large, loyal and reliable security force. Not having such a force handy was unthinkable for any security conscious dictator. For example, in Iraq, Saddam Hussein had his Republican Guard, a force that was filled with well paid, well armed men who were, above all, loyal to Saddam. All other successful dictatorships have similar forces. Russia had the KGB, which not only employed spies, but also several divisions of troops trained and equipped to deal with rebellions by the population, or the armed forces. Iran has a similar force, the Revolutionary Guard, that serves a similar role as the old KGB. During World War II, Adolf Hitler had the SS, Gestapo and his private army, the Waffen SS, all of which kept Germany fighting until the very end.

Former Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak got lazy and greedy by filling his “regime maintenance” forces with conscripts (as troops) and recent college graduates (as officers). Theses security forces, like the 325,000 paramilitary police in the Central Security Services (belonging to the Interior Ministry, nor the Defense Ministry), were more loyal to the people than to the small group of corrupt politicians running the country. Things had gotten so bad that the small secret police force had taken to hiring criminal gangs to harass or intimidate visible opponents of the government. These thugs fled if faced with serious opposition. And that’s what they got during February, 2011.

“Murphy’s Law: Storm Troopers Are Not A Luxury”, Strategy Page, 2011-02-16

February 13, 2011

Egypt’s long road to reform

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:50

Strategy Page lists some of the many difficulties facing Egypt:

Although deposed dictator Mubarak officially maintained the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Mubarak also had the state controlled media constantly criticize Israel for real and (mostly) imagined crimes against Moslems. Mubarak allowed Hamas to bring in Iranian weapons and cash (for an eventual attack on Israel). Mubarak did what any dictator does, he found an external enemy to blame things on. But all of Egypt’s problems are internal, mostly in the form of corrupt government officials and most of the economy controlled by a few hundred families. It’s as the Russian czar said once, when asked about his great power, “I do not run Russia, 10,000 clerks do.” It’s the same in Egypt (or any other country). Replacing enough of the several hundred thousand officials (government and business), to really be in power, will be difficult for any reform politicians. Replacing all the current “clerks” with honest ones will be impossible. Eliminating corruption takes a generation or more, assuming you really try. There are centuries of history with that sort of thing, but Arabs tend to consult their own special history book, one found in the fiction section, and full of tales of imaginary Arab accomplishments, and a long list of self-inflicted injuries blamed on others. The fact is that Egypt, like most Arab nations, has long neglected education and economic opportunity. Literacy is only 71 percent, and corrupt officials make it impossible to start a legal business. Economic activity is monopolized by the several hundred families who see nothing wrong with crippling the economy for their own gain. The wealthy have not hesitated to use thugs and death squads to maintain their power. While often at each other’s throats over business or personal matters, the several hundred thousand officials and business leaders will largely unite at any attempts to dismantle their economic arrangements. Bribes, threats and all sorts of enticements will be offered cripple the reform efforts. While most Egyptians demand reform, those benefitting from the current arrangements know that they have thousands of years of Egyptian history on their side. Occasionally, foreigners would take advantage of this culture of corruption, which extended to the army, and invade. But the Egyptian ruling class would soon absorb the invaders, and the business of running Egypt would return to its normal ways.

Israel knows well how corrupt the Egyptian armed forces are. Except for a few years before the 1973 war, when a highly efficient Anwar Sadat was running the army, the Egyptian armed forces have been allowed to wallow in their usual incompetent self-delusion. Peacetime armies have long been seen as perfect sources of wealth for corrupt politicians. Thus, in the last three decades, the Egyptian forces have done their job in this department. A new Egyptian government, seeking to gain domestic and foreign popularity by cancelling the peace treaty with Israel, would restore the threat of Egypt foolishly starting another war they would lose. Israel would have to redeploy its forces to deal with this. That would cost money, and weaken the edge Israel has in the north against Hezbollah and Syria. All this would not really change the balance of power. What might do that is reforms in the Egyptian military, to eliminate corruption and raise standards. Good luck with that.

Egypt may achieve reform, to include a sharp reduction in corruption and true rule of law. What is less certain is dealing with the effects of three decades of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic propaganda in the state controlled media. But the biggest problems are internal, and solving those are a long shot.

Many Egyptians have doubts that democracy will work in Egypt. They point to Lebanon and Iraq as examples of what happens when you allow Arabs to use democracy to rule themselves. The 22 year old Lebanese democracy fell apart in 1975, followed by fifteen years of civil war, then a peace deal that left the country divided into the “democratic” north, with the south ruled by a Shia religious dictatorship (Hezbollah) financed by Iran. Iraq has a barely functioning democracy that many Arabs despise because it was facilitated by an American/British invasion to remove an Arab dictator. What Arabs really find discouraging about Iraq’s democracy is that it reveals how difficult it is to run such a government. But as Westerners constantly point out, freedom isn’t free and democracy isn’t easy. If you want the goodies, you have to make the effort.

Update: Lawrence Solomon thinks that the path to democracy is even harder, and less likely to succeed:

In Egypt, the ends that democracy would bring are more likely death, submission and the pursuit of jihad, as defined by the country’s Muslim Brotherhood. “The Koran is our constitution, the Jihad is our way, and the Death for Allah is our most exalted wish,” it proclaims. The word Islam does mean “submission.”

Most Egyptians — three-quarters of its overwhelmingly Muslim population, public opinion polls say — want “strict imposition of Sharia law” and a larger proportion wants policies that most in the West would view as human rights abuses — 82% would stone adulterers and 84% want the death penalty for Muslims who leave their faith.

While most of the urban generation in Cairo’s Tahrir Square desires a modern Egyptian state of some kind, the Egyptian majority does not: 91% of Muslims want to keep “Western values out of Islamic countries.” For the vast majority outside the main cities, the outrages perpetrated by Mubarak lie mostly in his suppression of Islamic fundamentalist values, such as his ban on female genital mutilation and his moves to phase out polygamy and child brides. Most Muslim Egyptians not only oppose a modern Egyptian state, they would dismantle the existing Egyptian state, two-thirds wanting instead “to unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or caliphate.”

But even with all of that said, he points out that things are not totally hopeless:

But traditional Egypt need not forever prevail. A poll just released by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, taken between Feb. 5 and Feb. 8 of residents of Cairo and Alexandria, the two centres of protest, shows both how different the major cities are from the rest of the country, and how much hope there is for a modern Egypt in the future.

The protest was mostly driven by the economy, with 37% citing either “poor economic conditions” or “Unemployment/Job conditions.” Corruption came in next, at 22%, followed by “poor delivery of services like electricity and water” at 5%. The social causes touted by the Western media were all but non-existent: Just 3% cited “political repression/no democracy” and another 3% cited “abuses by security services/arrests/torture etc.” Neither are the populations in these urban centres motivated by fundamentalism. Only 4% complained of a “Regime not Islamic enough,” only 4% of a “Regime Too Connected to the U.S.,” and just 3% of a “Regime Too Supportive of Israel.” In a hypothetical election for president, one-third of the residents of these cities favoured either Mubarak (16%) or his vice-president, Omar Suleiman (17%), compared to 26% for Amr Musa, a prominent diplomat.

Mohammed ElBaradei, a diplomat endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood, would receive just 3% of the vote.

February 6, 2011

US repositioning military forces near Egypt

Filed under: Middle East, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:58

It should come as no surprise that the American government is changing the location and composition of forces around Egypt, as the situation becomes more volatile. Both US Navy and USMC units are involved in the moves. According to the L.A. Times, the USS Kearsarge is a key part of the redeployment:

The Pentagon is moving U.S. warships and other military assets to make sure it is prepared in case evacuation of U.S. citizens from Egypt becomes necessary, officials said Friday.

The Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship carrying 700 to 800 troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and the Ponce have arrived in the Red Sea, putting them off Egypt’s shores in case the situation worsens.

Pentagon officials emphasized that military intervention in Egypt was not being contemplated and that the warships were being moved only for contingency purposes in case evacuations became necessary.

Business Insider reports that USMC units are being moved now:

A senior member of the US Marine corps is telling people “multiple platoons” are deploying to Egypt, a source tells us.

There is a system within the US Marines that alerts the immediate families of high-ranking marines when their marine will soon be deployed to an emergency situation where they will not be able to talk to their spouses or families.

That alert just went out, says our source.

For those of you not steeped in military jargon, a “platoon” is a small tactical unit of about 40 men, commanded by a lieutenant. This is not an “invasion force” sized move.

February 5, 2011

Unlike most media pundits, he’s actually been to Egypt

Filed under: Middle East — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:09

I’m referring to Victor, who was in Egypt just under two years ago, and recounts some of his experiences then:

This is where all my feelings for Egypt go downhill. We visit a Mosque first thing, we arrive between prayer, but honestly, you wouldn’t know it. We’re trying to move with the crowd, when suddenly a woman steps between my girlfriend and I (not current girlfriend), and smacks her before running off. Both a bit disturbed by this, we talk to our tour guide, who acts awkwardly, and apologizes to us. Once in the mosque, we are sort of at a loss for what to do with ourselves. It’s a beautiful place, but positively hostile; we’re glared at everywhere we go.

Leaving the Mosque, we head to the Pyramids, those claustrophobic (Me!) get to wait outside while everyone else goes in. Apparently it was dark, hot, smelly, and genuinely unenjoyable, so I’m just as glad I saw from the outside. Crossing a bit of a sand plane between the Pyramids and the Sphinx, however, a friend of mine was accosted by a man with a camel. He made the mistake of shaking this guy’s hand, and was suddenly wisked onto the camel, and they began to ride off. My friend jumped down and ran back after about 50 feet, but yeah, not great. Sphinx was sketchy as all hell, people constantly eyeing us, watching where we moved, etc. One small boy, egged on by an older man, followed closely behind us, and made several attempts to get into people’s pockets. We were all so flustered, I’m not sure anyone enjoyed the Sphinx.

After the Sphinx, we were moved to another location, where we were to have our camel rides. Cool, not a lot can go wrong on a camel ride that was arranged and paid for, right? The first group went out and came back without a hitch, so my group boarded, and our camels began their galumphing walk around the block. [. . .] two girls from the tour group are missing, and they went out on the same Camel ride that I did. [. . .] I witness some boys trying to torture a dog while sitting on the bus, and want to go smack them about. Then a police officer does my wishes for me himself, waving his bully club at them and letting the dog down. The girls appear around a corner, scrambling back on foot, relating that their camel drivers dropped back from the rest of the group and took a different rout from the rest, and when they got too far, the two of them jumped down and hauled back.

[. . .]

The author of the book talks about how resourceful and friendly the Egyptians are, and how nicely they treat foreigners, I saw none of that, to be honest, more a willingness to take advantage, or play on Westerner’s emotions. I won’t go back to Egypt, it was my worst travelling experience.

The joys of tourism . . .

February 3, 2011

Middle East unrest spreads to Yemen

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Middle East, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:37

First Tunisia, then Egypt, now Yemen:

Tens of thousands of Yemenis squared off in street protests for and against the government on Thursday during an opposition-led “Day of Rage,” a day after President Ali Abdullah Saleh offered to step down in 2013.

Anti-government activists drew more than 20,000 in Sanaa, the biggest crowd since a wave of protests hit the Arabian Peninsula state two weeks ago, inspired by demonstrations that toppled Tunisia’s ruler and threaten Egypt’s president.

But an equally large pro-Saleh protest also picked up steam, and supporters of the president who has ruled Yemen for more than three decades drove around the capital urging Yemenis over loudspeakers to join their counter-demonstrations.

The protests in Sanaa fizzled out by midday, with demonstrators on both sides dispersing peacefully ahead of a traditional afternoon break to chew qat, a mild stimulant leaf widely consumed in Yemen.

« Newer PostsOlder Posts »

Powered by WordPress