Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Ahtman wrote:

ChrisWWII wrote:Well no. That doesn't really make much sense...

Perhaps if you read it again and thought about it for a minute it might make more sense.


Just in case:

Spoiler:

I even say I'm wrong in the post.

I could have just rolled a double one for detect sarcasm, with that response, but taking your comment literally, you said that becaue rioters attacked Anderson Cooper you believed that we were now at war. While you did say you were likely wrong, I did still feel the need to respond.

Man, we were so excited to go avenge Anderson Cooper too.

Ketara wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that because America threatened to kill the British and French currencies and economies unless they withdrew?

Yeah, along with some UN machinations that's about my recollection as well.

Funny how times have changed, the US actually went against Israel in something...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ketara wrote:The Israeli's would level them if it appeared they had become a threat to Israel. They'd never have a chance to consolidate power.

It isn't just the direct threat of Egyptian action (which I agree is comically small to Israel).

Egypt is responsble for enforcing the quarantine on Palestine across the border they share. Without continued Egyptian support the quarantine becomes unenforceable. Which would change Israeli and Palestinian relations a whole lot.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

dogma wrote:One thing to note is that your average Egyptian isn't very fond of Israel. The peace was brokered, and maintained by the military. Any civilian, Egyptian government is likely to be fairly hostile to Israel.

Thankfully the military has a massive amount of political power.

Sure, and as you note later there's nothing saying that a more hostile stance will necessarily lead to war. Especially not when the Egyptian military is so much weaker than the IDF.

The real issue will come from Egpyt no longer maintaining the quarantine on Palestine.

Yeah, Israel kind of rocks the military in that region. If I can remember the Military channel correctly Israel loves to use pre-emptive strikes and in one day were able to knock out both Egypt's and Syria's respective air forces. I also believe that all Israeli citizens between 18 and about 40 are military trained and can be mobilized within 24 hours, not sure if that was correct or not.

So, is it fair to say that Isreal is gearing up to push back the Egyptians once this ends?

Although I hear that the Egyptian military is currently taking MANY thoughts from the US, and continuing to be neutral. I think its fair to say that the police are the only government faction currently on a side. But the revolutionaries are tearing the city apart to fight them. Its impressive.

Happygrunt wrote:So, is it fair to say that Isreal is gearing up to push back the Egyptians once this ends?

Although I hear that the Egyptian military is currently taking MANY thoughts from the US, and continuing to be neutral. I think its fair to say that the police are the only government faction currently on a side. But the revolutionaries are tearing the city apart to fight them. Its impressive.

From my friends in Egypt I'm hearing that the military is tacitly supporting Mubarak through plainclothes soldiers, and general indifference.

There is also, apparently, a serious conflict brewing in Tahir Square.

dogma wrote:

Happygrunt wrote:So, is it fair to say that Isreal is gearing up to push back the Egyptians once this ends?

Although I hear that the Egyptian military is currently taking MANY thoughts from the US, and continuing to be neutral. I think its fair to say that the police are the only government faction currently on a side. But the revolutionaries are tearing the city apart to fight them. Its impressive.

From my friends in Egypt I'm hearing that the military is tacitly supporting Mubarak through plainclothes soldiers, and general indifference.

There is also, apparently, a serious conflict brewing in Tahir Square.

Tomorrow is friday, if the president is still there, then the hits the fan.

The only way he'll step down is if his VP will replace him. Anything else will basically entail a free for all.

dogma wrote:From my friends in Egypt I'm hearing that the military is tacitly supporting Mubarak through plainclothes soldiers, and general indifference.

There is also, apparently, a serious conflict brewing in Tahir Square.

At least you are hearing from your friends. One of my wife's friends lives in Cairo and we haven't been able to contact her. Hoping it is just the rolling internet outages and such.

GDP includes all economic activity in a country. In other words, when an Egyptian housewife goes down the market and buys a can of cooking oil, some GDP has been created.

This kind of activity is unimportant when discussing the importance of foreign tourism, because domestic activity does not produce foreign currency earnings, which are needed to buy imports.

Most countries have about 80% of their GDP generated by their domestic activities rather than exports. If this is true for Egypt -- I am just guessing, to make a broad point -- then tourism at 2.5% of total GDP makes up 12.5% of foreign currency earnings, which makes it fairly important.

"The Muslim Brotherhood has said it would not field a presidential candidate or seek ministers in a new cabinet, ABC reports. Christine Amanpour, who interviewed Mubarak yesterday, is interpreting the move as calculated to soothe western fears of an Islamist government succeeding Mubarak."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/feb/04/egypt-protests-day-departure-live

Smooth move.

Amaya wrote:"The Muslim Brotherhood has said it would not field a presidential candidate or seek ministers in a new cabinet, ABC reports. Christine Amanpour, who interviewed Mubarak yesterday, is interpreting the move as calculated to soothe western fears of an Islamist government succeeding Mubarak."

It's working! It's also likely meant to soothe tensions in israel which is currently loading the border up with troops.

Kilkrazy wrote:GDP includes all economic activity in a country. In other words, when an Egyptian housewife goes down the market and buys a can of cooking oil, some GDP has been created.

This kind of activity is unimportant when discussing the importance of foreign tourism, because domestic activity does not produce foreign currency earnings, which are needed to buy imports.

Most countries have about 80% of their GDP generated by their domestic activities rather than exports. If this is true for Egypt -- I am just guessing, to make a broad point -- then tourism at 2.5% of total GDP makes up 12.5% of foreign currency earnings, which makes it fairly important.

We know what creates GDP, and we know the greater significance of items that provide cash inflows. No-one is suggesting that at 2.5% of GDP tourism wasn't still important.

The comment is simply that Egypt's tourism, at around 2.5% of GDP is still surprisingly low. Think of it this way, it has artifacts that are among the most famous in the world, and no great manufacturing base or skills sector to dwarf it's tourism, yet it still only generates around 2.5% of GDP through tourism.

Compare it to France, a much more developed country with more developed skills sector and industry - they've got around 6% of their income coming from tourism. Spain beats that with 6.5%. Even Australia, which is miles away from anywhere and is another developed economy, clocks in at around 3.5%. Now, those countries are noted tourist destinations, but so is Egypt, I would have thought Egypt would be much closer to 5%, or even greater.

Egypt is a lot farther away from western Europe than France and Spain. I can get on a train and be in France in three hours. People do Paris as a day trip.

Going by the Thomas Cook website, the holidays being sold in Egypt are basically beach/resort hotel like you can easily get in Spain. The Spanish ones are cheaper.

Personally I am more interested in antiquities than beaches. What I would like is a Nile cruise with side trips to the major sites.

I'm surprised that Australia racks up 3.5%. It is relatively close to the Far East, of course.

Kilkrazy wrote:Egypt is a lot farther away from western Europe than France and Spain. I can get on a train and be in France in three hours. People do Paris as a day trip.

Yeah, I know, distance travelled is a factor, and so is ease and convenience - there's a whole lot less planning involved in a French vacation than there is in an Egyptian vacation. But thing is, France and Spain have large, first world economies, so 6 and 6.5% of GDP is a reasonable proportion of a really big pie. In Egypt their 2.5% is a smaller portion of a pie that isn't too big to being with.

To take it out of % and into total dollars generated, tourism in Egypt generates about $10 billion a year, in France it's around $120 billion. That's a really surprising difference, and while I never would have thought Egypt would have been close to French tourism, I never would have thought the difference would have been by a factor of twelve.

Going by the Thomas Cook website, the holidays being sold in Egypt are basically beach/resort hotel like you can easily get in Spain. The Spanish ones are cheaper.

I spend a lot of time wondering about people who use their trips away to lie by a swimming pool. There's a whole world to see...

*This space reserved for a culturally insensitive joke about not needing to go all the way to Egypt to see Ancient Egyptian antiquities when you can just go to London to look at all the ones we nicked when we were running the world.*

Kilkrazy wrote:Egypt is a lot farther away from western Europe than France and Spain. I can get on a train and be in France in three hours. People do Paris as a day trip.

I've gotten from London to Cairo in as little as 12 hours.

The boats that cross the Mediterranean are underestimated commodities.

Albatross wrote:
*This space reserved for a culturally insensitive joke about not needing to go all the way to Egypt to see Ancient Egyptian antiquities when you can just go to London to look at all the ones we nicked when we were running the world.*

Frazzled wrote:http://en.rian.ru/world/20110203/162433368.html

Egypt's banned Muslim Brotherhood movement has unveiled its plans to scrap a peace treaty with Israel if it comes to power, a deputy leader said in the interview with NHK TV.

Backwards, oppressive Islamic governments are the last thing Egypt needs.

At the same time, the US doesn't need to intervene, or if they do it should be subtle and carefully thought out, because that makes the democracy movement look like it was a US backed attempt to push American culture on Islamic countries.

If the democracy looks like it is an attempt by Egypt natives with no outside influence, then it gains far more power amongst the various Islamic nations, and more people in the other nations will try to push THEIR governments too, even if it doesn't always lead to revolt. Obama's hands-off approach looks to be paying dividends.

We're going to get blamed no matter what we do in my own opinion. If it turns out for the worse they'll blame us for not intervening or for intervening, if it turns out good they'll say we had nothing to do with it and that we shouldn't intervene more often.

In truth I agree that we shouldn't intervene in most situations because we don't necessarily know what's best for everyone. We'll keep doing it though because the government doesn't seem to learn from their mistakes.

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:http://en.rian.ru/world/20110203/162433368.html

Egypt's banned Muslim Brotherhood movement has unveiled its plans to scrap a peace treaty with Israel if it comes to power, a deputy leader said in the interview with NHK TV.

Backwards, oppressive Islamic governments are the last thing Egypt needs.

Do you have something against religious based forms of government? Or is it just Islam in particular?

halonachos wrote:We're going to get blamed no matter what we do in my own opinion. If it turns out for the worse they'll blame us for not intervening or for intervening, if it turns out good they'll say we had nothing to do with it and that we shouldn't intervene more often.

In truth I agree that we shouldn't intervene in most situations because we don't necessarily know what's best for everyone. We'll keep doing it though because the government doesn't seem to learn from their mistakes.

I honestly think the US is taking the correct approach now. But that's just the front pages; I don't know to what extent US support is going either way in the bigger scheme of things, especially seeing that Israel stands to loose a previously reliable ally.

halonachos wrote:We're going to get blamed no matter what we do in my own opinion. If it turns out for the worse they'll blame us for not intervening or for intervening, if it turns out good they'll say we had nothing to do with it and that we shouldn't intervene more often.

In truth I agree that we shouldn't intervene in most situations because we don't necessarily know what's best for everyone. We'll keep doing it though because the government doesn't seem to learn from their mistakes.

We're going to get blamed because we propped up an unpopular, repressive and violent dictator for 30 years for security and business reasons. Not really because of what we're doing now.

ShumaGorath wrote:

halonachos wrote:We're going to get blamed no matter what we do in my own opinion. If it turns out for the worse they'll blame us for not intervening or for intervening, if it turns out good they'll say we had nothing to do with it and that we shouldn't intervene more often.

In truth I agree that we shouldn't intervene in most situations because we don't necessarily know what's best for everyone. We'll keep doing it though because the government doesn't seem to learn from their mistakes.

We're going to get blamed because we propped up an unpopular, repressive and violent dictator for 30 years for security and business reasons. Not really because of what we're doing now.

We'll see when this thing ends, I put money on being blamed.

halonachos wrote:
We'll see when this thing ends, I put money on being blamed.

What, for the regime? I think you're being blamed for that already.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:http://en.rian.ru/world/20110203/162433368.html

Egypt's banned Muslim Brotherhood movement has unveiled its plans to scrap a peace treaty with Israel if it comes to power, a deputy leader said in the interview with NHK TV.

Backwards, oppressive Islamic governments are the last thing Egypt needs.

Do you have something against religious based forms of government? Or is it just Islam in particular?

Religious based forms of government are bad.

If only America could've stuck to seperation of church and state, if only...

halonachos wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

halonachos wrote:We're going to get blamed no matter what we do in my own opinion. If it turns out for the worse they'll blame us for not intervening or for intervening, if it turns out good they'll say we had nothing to do with it and that we shouldn't intervene more often.

In truth I agree that we shouldn't intervene in most situations because we don't necessarily know what's best for everyone. We'll keep doing it though because the government doesn't seem to learn from their mistakes.

We're going to get blamed because we propped up an unpopular, repressive and violent dictator for 30 years for security and business reasons. Not really because of what we're doing now.

We'll see when this thing ends, I put money on being blamed.

Yes, I know. I just said we were already being blamed and that it's not going to end specifically because we kinda deserve it.

CIA: Pissing of the world since 1963.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

halonachos wrote:
We'll see when this thing ends, I put money on being blamed.

What, for the regime? I think you're being blamed for that already.

For the regime we are, but I'm talking about the aftermath. If the new democracy turns out to be bad we'll get blamed, if the new democracy turns out well they'll say we should stay out of other affairs more often.

halonachos wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:

halonachos wrote:
We'll see when this thing ends, I put money on being blamed.

What, for the regime? I think you're being blamed for that already.

For the regime we are, but I'm talking about the aftermath. If the new democracy turns out to be bad we'll get blamed, if the new democracy turns out well they'll say we should stay out of other affairs more often.

If the new democracy is bad we'll get blamed because our actions led directly to the situation in which the new government would be strife ridden. No matter how this goes we're going to get blamed because we were heavily involved in propping up the old order and the new one is going to come immediately after.

Funny thing, the United States deserves about 98% of the blame it gets.

dogma wrote:Funny thing, the United States deserves about 98% of the blame it gets.

Bull gak.