Les Vaches Qui Rient
Even before Hosni Mubarak took over in 1981, many Arabs had started calling him “La Vache Qui Rit”, the Laughing Cow, after a popular French cheese spread that advertised a lot on Arab television.
The idea was that when he was vice president under Anwar Sadat, all he did was grin during cabinet meetings. Grin and nod approval at whatever Sadat said. That was the plausible claim.
Enter Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi. Now Al Sisi also grins and nods a lot, but mainly in the presence of Saudi princes and Gulf potentates. I fully expect him to be considered the newest version of the old one. La Vache Qui Rit 2.0.
As for military-appointed interim president Adly Mansour Al Zombie, it is back to the cellars for him. Back to the dusty judicial bureaucracy from whence he was plucked to play pretend president.
Cheers
mhg
“In Iran’s intelligence war against America, the regime has a new weapon: “John R. Bolton.” No, Iran has not turned President Bush’s former ambassador to the United Nations into a sleeper agent. Instead, hackers believed to be connected to the Tehran government are posing as Bolton on social media platforms in a scheme to get human rights activists and national security wonks to hand over their passwords and user names. The fake Bolton LinkedIn account provides a window into how Iran’s hackers are trying to penetrate the policy networks of their government’s adversaries. Most experts say Iran lacks the sophistication to launch the kinds of advanced cyber attacks it has suffered at the hands of the West, such as the Stuxnet worm……………..” John Bolton is so far out to the extreme that the Republican-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejected him when Bush (W) nominated him for U.N. ambassador. He was appointed for one year during a congressional recess, bypassing the Senate vote. Cheers
Cheers
EgyptLa Vache Qui RitSisi
John Bolton’s Gift to Iran: the Chickenhawk and the Cyber Mullahs………
mhg Cyber SecurityCyber WarsIranJohn Bolton
Back On the Gulf: Foreign Negative Phenomena, Local Negative Phenomena ……..
Kuwait News Agency reports from an assembly member who is head of the Committee for Negative Phenomena (لجنة الظواهر السلبية) that they discussed and approved a proposal to ban ‘nudity’ in all swimming pools and in hotel lobbies and hallways. The committee also approved a proposal to establish a ‘center’ for Foreign Negative Phenomena in Kuwait just of the kind they have in other Gulf GCC states
I did not know that we had people running around naked in hotel lobbies back home. I had never seen one naked person, male or female, in a hotel lobby. Not back home on the Gulf anyway. But then again, ‘naked’ is in the eye of the beholder: it depends on what the definition of ‘naked’ is. Showing a woman’s bare toes might excite the imagination of a Wahhabi Salafi and hence be considered a form of nakedness (naked toes?). Showing any part of the face other than the eyes might be considered “nakedness” to some tribal worthies.
Perhaps the Committee could have suggested a new law (or even a constitutional amendment) declaring that we are a fully-dressed society. Which we certainly are, possibly more than we think, but possibly less.
While at it, they might add most of the Assembly members to the list of “negative phenomena”. The way most of them are always elected is absolutely negative: tribal first and sectarian second. Besides the nonsensical stuff many of them propose………..
mhg GCCKuwaitNational AssemblyNudityلجنة الظواهر السلبية
Photographic Tale of Two Polling Stations: Voting in Cairo, Voting in Beirut, Voting in Riyadh……
Pictorial tale of elections: Compare the two polling stations in the photos below. One is of Syrian exiles and refugees in voting in their elections in Beirut Lebanon. The other one is of a lonely Egyptian polling station in the heart of Cairo:
Saudi prince and his, er, ahem, votersMultidisciplinary: Middle East, North Africa, Gulf, GCC, World, Cosmos…..
