So, there’s a lot of terrorism in Egypt these days.
Since 2013, terrorism has increasingly disrupted life in Egypt, especially in the Sinai. The Egyptian hinterland has witnessed more than seventeen hundred attacks over the past four years, according to a tally by the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. The Sinai Province, the local ISIS affiliate, has claimed credit for some eight hundred of them. Lately, the attacks have been creeping closer to Cairo and targeting more civilians.
This is NOT A SURPRISE.
The Muslim Brotherhood won the Egyptian elections fair and square. Then, the military overthrew them in a coup, outlawed them, seized their territory, and locked up or killed a pile of them.
The Muslim Brotherhood, whatever one thinks of their ideology, was basically peaceful: They took care of the poor. They were popular because they cared for people.
At first, the violence hit mostly military and police targets, but as it has been taken over by people far nastier than the Muslim Brotherhood, the violence has hit civilians far more.
This should not be a surprise. If you prove that peaceful elections don’t work and subsequently outlaw the most successful, peaceful Muslim organization, they aren’t going to be replaced by nice people. You’ve just proved that “nice does not work.”
Now you get to deal with the unpleasant people.
And, hey, it turns out the military can’t run the economy well, either. What a surprise.
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V. Arnold
Well, there’s been another interesting development in Egypt; they’re back with Russia, having just agreed to allow Russia’s military to use its airfields.
I can’t find the link; post it when I do…
highrpm
goes hand-in-glove with ian’s earlier musing on money-is-power-and-billionaires-can-subvert-democracy. i live in a co-op. structured/ conceived as a private non-profit corporation. each player buys 100 shares of stock. to lease a single unit. which he trades on the open real estate market for whatever $$$ the market will bear at the time. corporate by-laws prohibit owning more. and owning to rent. prevents the bozos and gatess from taking over by the power of accumulation. true democracy. true communism. it works as best as is humanly possible. no real blood is let. peace ebbs and flows like the ocean tide. only temporary spats the precipitate stock sales. why aren’t amazon and microsoft structured similarly? where all players buy equal shares. and board tenure is limited and turns over regularly. by stockholder votes. hey, even the janitor could possibly be president for a bit. no fuking wall street power brokers. no fuking homeless wastelands. no identity politics. spats? yes. players? all. democracy = communism. communism = democracy. as yes , it breaks from time to time. and the property suffers as a result. and maintenance and disrepair goes up and down. big deal. that’s life. but there’s no fuking large-scale stealing/ killing/ destroying.
Ten Bears
Who stands to gain? To whose best interests would we bomb Iran? Egypt?
Not Cascadia, nor the rest of the world.
We have to stop doing what we’re doing. It isn’t working.
different clue
As rising sea levels subtract more land from the prime farmland area of the Nile Delta, and as annual floodwater silt/clay/etc. keeps failing to replenish soil-levels along the Lower Nile and the Nile Delta due to the Aswan Dam trapping all that silt/clay/etc. upriver, and as the Egyptian population keeps growing in the teeth of all that . . . social tension in Egypt will keep getting worse.
I wonder who will kill whom in Egypt once Egypt hits the Hard Unsustainability Wall.
Peter
@DC
The sea level increased 7 inches in the last century and no matter the dire warnings from the CAGW alarmists it’s unlikely to increase by the 1 to 3 meters in the next century their shoddy predictions try to frighten people with.
Egypt irrigates about 8 million acres from the Aswan project and about 25% of that is new acreage outside the old flood plane. They also produce three crops a year with year-round irrigation. Their problem is population growth and antiquated farming practices that can’t keep up. The costal rising tide problem is already being addressed with multiple remedies including dikes. They aren’t going to sit on their hands while the slowly rising sea floods their delta.
Johnnygl
I think it is also worth pointing out that egypt’s military is american trained and american equipped and is, unsurprisingly, making american mistakes. Just like afghanistan, as the new yorker article observes.
Synoia
Peter
Dikes do not stop the sea encroaching on the delta.
Dikes eventually fail.
Willy
Plus Ethiopia is building a huge dam…
Chiron
The Egyptian military was supported by the Saudi-israeli alliance in getting rid of Morsi and criminalizing the Muslim Brotherhood.
Tom W Harris
The MB were always criminals.
Peter
@Sy
The Dutch have done quite well with dikes for a thousand years and they are on the North Sea a much harsher environment than the Med.
Willy
No doubts when Egypt finally does have it’s spring of freedom and eliminates all the generals, commies and brotherhoods, their powerhouse private companies like Suez Concrete and Oriental Weavers will be building the most awesome dikes.
Ten Bears
As sea levels rise so too the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere, increasing the condesation flows out of the upper elevations and into the rivers that flow to sea. Coastal flooding isn’t the only flooding associated with a warmer, wetter, more violent atmosphere.
Seben billion people
Ten Bears
Seven billion people in a very thin layer of gases on a ball of rock that can barely sustain one. Don’t do the math, grow thicker skin.