Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak appointed his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman vice president not because Suleiman had any sway with the Egyptian street but rather because the new veep knows the military better than anyone. A former general, Suleiman has spent his career helping keeping Egypt's officers in line. He learned by heart the biographies of every officer, uncannily capable of predicting who was loyal and who wasn't. That privileged catalog is key to anyone who wants to control the closed military dictatorship that Egypt has been since a 1952 coup d'etat overthrew the monarchy. And that's why everyone else seems to be confused about what's going to happen next in Egypt, including Egyptians.
This is a vanity post I suspect? (please do not eat me for lunch if I am posting incorrectly.) I have 14 and 17 year old tees who have no clue abut the history of the Middle East leading up to the most recent protests. Please send me intelligent links they can understand...preferrably video. Like many, these kids want info bites, not War and Peace. If they have their way, they will never have to fall asleep reading text like I still do. Many thanks in advance!
Actually all this news is in the Near East, not the Middle East.
The Middle East is east of the Euphrates River (the Persian and Hindi nations)
The Near East is the Shemetic nations (Arab, Turk and Hebrew).
Should it hit the Middle East, it may become nuclear.
Not Fox, not CNN (even their website has its most recent entry more than 4 hours old), not AP, BBC has a report from almost 90 minutes ago.
Maybe it's all a big fizzle.
It was a nightmare of trying to contact the embassy, the tour guide, going to the airline counter with hundreds of others trying to get out of the country with three ticket agents on duty, waiting overnight in the airport for a possible flight, waiting in line to change flights again after the flight doesn't come through, contacting the embassy, no internet or ATM access. I read the e-mail from the couple and it was a nightmare. Every bad vacation you've ever had in trying to arrange logistics in a foreign country, these guys went through. Not to mention they spent all their on-hand cash on that overpriced cab ride and had to depend on the kindness of the hotel staff and then the tour guide to get through a couple of days in the hotel and food to eat on borrowed money.
They finally got ATM access and intermittent internet where they withdrew money to pay back the hotel and the tour guide. Their stateside travel agent was able to get them a flight out of Cairo, and they printed the vouchers off their laptop. They are still making their way back to their overseas home. Please continue to pray for a peaceful transition to a democrat government.