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Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...
Years ago I made the observation on another iTulip thread that real trouble in the Middle East would originate not in Iran or Iraq, but from some other place that was not then on the radar screen. Having spent a lot of time there building a business venture in the country, my view at the time was that Egypt was the front runner at risk of "blowing up". Long before the Saudis and Emiratis became wildly wealthy on oil, Egypt was the wealthiest and most influential country in the Arab world. It had the largest population, the most diversified economy, the most advanced universities, and even today remains the center of the influential Arab film industry. If iTulipers are wondering why I seem so focused on Egypt in the posts on this thread, what happens in Egypt plays a much bigger role in influencing Arab opinion than anything happening in Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
Egypt protesters torch buildings, try to target Suez Canal
Sat Mar 9, 2013 10:49am EST
* First major attempt to disrupt canal traffic fails
* Fans torch police club, soccer headquarters in Cairo
* Islamist government struggling to keep law and order
* Police on alert for jihadist attacks in Sinai
PORT SAID, Egypt/CAIRO, March 9 (Reuters) - Egyptian protesters torched buildings in Cairo and tried unsuccessfully to disrupt international shipping on the Suez Canal, as a court ruling on a deadly soccer riot stoked rage in a country beset by worsening security.
The ruling enraged residents of Port Said, at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal, by confirming death sentences imposed on 21 local soccer fans for their role in the riot last year when more than 70 people were killed.
But the court also angered rival fans in Cairo by acquitting a further 28 defendants that they wanted punished, including seven members of the police force which is reviled across society for its brutality under deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak...
...Saturday's protests and violence underlined how Islamist President Mohamed Mursi is struggling - two years after Mubarak's overthrow - to maintain law and order at a time of economic and political crisis.
On Thursday Egypt's election committee scrapped a timetable under which voting for the lower house of parliament should have begun next month, following a court ruling that threw the entire polling process into confusion...
...In a separate security threat, the Interior Ministry ordered police in the Sinai peninsula to raise their state of emergency after receiving intelligence that jihadists might attack their forces there, MENA reported.
Officials have expressed growing worries about security in the desert region which borders Israel and is home to a number of tourist resorts. In August last year Islamist militant gunmen killed at least 15 Egyptian policemen in an assault on a police station on the border with Israel, before seizing two military vehicles and attempting to storm the frontier.
Last Thursday, Bedouin gunmen briefly held the head of U.S. oil major ExxonMobil in Egypt and his wife. The Britons, who had been heading for a Sinai resort, were released unharmed.
General unrest is rife as the Egypt's poor suffer badly from the economic crisis. Foreign currency reserves have slid to critically low levels and are now little more than a third of what they were in the last days of Mubarak.
The Egyptian pound has lost 14 percent against the dollar since the 2011 revolution and the budget deficit is soaring to unmanageable levels due to the huge cost of fuel and food subsidies. Egypt agreed a $4.8 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund last November, but Cairo requested a delay due to street violence the following month.
Analysts say the chances of an IMF deal are slim until the electoral chaos is sorted out, but question how much longer the government can hold out without international funding...
Years ago I made the observation on another iTulip thread that real trouble in the Middle East would originate not in Iran or Iraq, but from some other place that was not then on the radar screen. Having spent a lot of time there building a business venture in the country, my view at the time was that Egypt was the front runner at risk of "blowing up". Long before the Saudis and Emiratis became wildly wealthy on oil, Egypt was the wealthiest and most influential country in the Arab world. It had the largest population, the most diversified economy, the most advanced universities, and even today remains the center of the influential Arab film industry. If iTulipers are wondering why I seem so focused on Egypt in the posts on this thread, what happens in Egypt plays a much bigger role in influencing Arab opinion than anything happening in Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
Egypt protesters torch buildings, try to target Suez Canal
Sat Mar 9, 2013 10:49am EST
* First major attempt to disrupt canal traffic fails
* Fans torch police club, soccer headquarters in Cairo
* Islamist government struggling to keep law and order
* Police on alert for jihadist attacks in Sinai
PORT SAID, Egypt/CAIRO, March 9 (Reuters) - Egyptian protesters torched buildings in Cairo and tried unsuccessfully to disrupt international shipping on the Suez Canal, as a court ruling on a deadly soccer riot stoked rage in a country beset by worsening security.
The ruling enraged residents of Port Said, at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal, by confirming death sentences imposed on 21 local soccer fans for their role in the riot last year when more than 70 people were killed.
But the court also angered rival fans in Cairo by acquitting a further 28 defendants that they wanted punished, including seven members of the police force which is reviled across society for its brutality under deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak...
...Saturday's protests and violence underlined how Islamist President Mohamed Mursi is struggling - two years after Mubarak's overthrow - to maintain law and order at a time of economic and political crisis.
On Thursday Egypt's election committee scrapped a timetable under which voting for the lower house of parliament should have begun next month, following a court ruling that threw the entire polling process into confusion...
...In a separate security threat, the Interior Ministry ordered police in the Sinai peninsula to raise their state of emergency after receiving intelligence that jihadists might attack their forces there, MENA reported.
Officials have expressed growing worries about security in the desert region which borders Israel and is home to a number of tourist resorts. In August last year Islamist militant gunmen killed at least 15 Egyptian policemen in an assault on a police station on the border with Israel, before seizing two military vehicles and attempting to storm the frontier.
Last Thursday, Bedouin gunmen briefly held the head of U.S. oil major ExxonMobil in Egypt and his wife. The Britons, who had been heading for a Sinai resort, were released unharmed.
General unrest is rife as the Egypt's poor suffer badly from the economic crisis. Foreign currency reserves have slid to critically low levels and are now little more than a third of what they were in the last days of Mubarak.
The Egyptian pound has lost 14 percent against the dollar since the 2011 revolution and the budget deficit is soaring to unmanageable levels due to the huge cost of fuel and food subsidies. Egypt agreed a $4.8 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund last November, but Cairo requested a delay due to street violence the following month.
Analysts say the chances of an IMF deal are slim until the electoral chaos is sorted out, but question how much longer the government can hold out without international funding...
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