The celebrations inspired a new narrative with an Egyptian setting.
In 1869, France’s Empress Eugenie led a flotilla of European royalties in the ceremonial opening of the Suez Canal, developed by her cousin, Ferdinand de Lesseps. The delayed result of the Khedive’s commission was Verdi’s Aida. On Thursday, Egypt’s latest ruler, former field marshal and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, celebrated the opening of a new channel to the canal, which will nearly double its capacity. Singing local schoolchildren replaced the visiting royalties, but, like his predecessor, Sisi had also commissioned a giant new building project in Cairo.
The author was Britain’s Defence Secretary Michael Fallon. His version was as much a fantasy as Aida, but far less beautiful.
In a special op-ed article for Egypt’s semi-official newspaper Al-Ahram, Fallon described the new channel as a “modern wonder” and a symbol of Egypt’s ambitions for a “more secure, more stable and more successful future”. He casually endorsed the Sisi government’s wildly optimistic forecasts of increased revenue from the canal. But more importantly, he praised Sisi’s “vision of a more prosperous, more democratic society” and promised to stand shoulder to shoulder with him against Islamic terrorism. Making the most oblique reference to human rights, Fallon told Al-Ahram’s readers: “We’re continuing to encourage the government to implement the rights guaranteed by the 2014 constitution.” The same kind of language was used by Stalin’s admirers about the rights guaranteed by the model Soviet constitution of 1936.
Clearly fearful of offending his host, Fallon proclaimed: “Egyptians have rejected both extremism and authoritarianism. There is a viable alternative: a responsive and accountable government, founded on rights, freedoms and the rule of law.” The clear implication was that Sisi was leading such a government.
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Fallon is one of the most approachable and articulate Thatcherite survivors in British politics. Serving two Liberal Democrat cabinet ministers under the recent coalition government, he managed to implement Thatcherite policies without strident confrontations. As defence secretary since July 2014, he astutely exploited cross-party concern about the stress on the UK armed forces to secure Chancellor of the Treasury George Osborne’s commitment to keep defence spending at 2 percent of UK GDP.
However, lately he has shown an unfortunate tendency to say bad and foolish things at the behest of his prime minister.
During the general election campaign, he gave then Labour leader Ed Miliband one of his few good days with a crass personal attack, suggesting that having stabbed his brother in the back Miliband would do the same to the country to become prime minister. But this was a quickly forgotten election stunt.
Fallon’s script on Sisi relies on massive distortion and suppression of the truth, and cements Britain’s relationship with a thoroughly unreliable partner, whose methods are becoming a greater and greater gift to the extremist and terrorist groups that the UK is currently combatting.
One would not imagine from Fallon’s article that Sisi had gained power in the wake of a military-led coup which overthrew Egypt’s first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi.
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Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood Islamist government had made errors, both presentational and practical. The condition of most Egyptians had deteriorated, particularly because of growing power shortages, and the mass protests against Morsi’s government in summer 2013 were at least in part genuine.
But Morsi was not a dictator or even a proto-dictator. The democratic constitution he introduced was approved by nearly 64 percent of voters in December 2012. At the time of his overthrow, there were no fewer than 40 active Egyptian political parties.
Fallon’s praise of Egypt’s “responsive and accountable government, founded on rights, freedoms and the rule of law” would sound hollow to the dozens of journalists imprisoned on trumped-up charges of abetting terrorism, in reality for not reporting events as the Sisi government wishes. Even apologists for Sisi are nervous that his sentence might be carried out.
In the famously cynical words of Napoleon’s police minister, Joseph Fouche, this would be “worse than a crime, a mistake,” giving Morsi the halo of martyrdom and perhaps driving some of his followers to seek revenge through terrorism.
Sisi’s increasing repression has not increased security in Egypt. According to analysis by the Washington DC-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, the incidence of terrorist attacks in the two years since the coup against Morsi is 15 times greater than in the two years before.
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Recent attacks by terrorists in Cairo and northern Sinai have been bolder and more destructive than ever before. In June, Sisi’s leading prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, was assassinated. The perpetrators are as yet unknown, but it showed that the regime could not protect one of its key agents. Sisi’s Suez Canal celebrations were marred when the Islamic State terrorist organisation threatened to execute a Croatian hostage.
After showing some instant improvements under Sisi, particularly on energy, the economy is showing the same failings as under previous regimes. In spite of huge injections of aid, mainly from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE, the economy cannot grow fast enough to boost living standards for a growing population of at present around 90 million.
Sisi’s government made an early attack on the huge public subsidies for basic foods and fuel. This reduced stress on the budget and eased distortions in the economy - but it left millions of Egyptians worse off. Meanwhile, the regime quailed at increasing taxes on landowners and businesses.
Fallon’s fantasies have been supported, at least publicly, by the UK’s ambassador to Cairo, the increasingly more compromised John Casson. In June, he remarked helpfully that “Security is a vital foundation for the more secure, prosperous and democratic Egypt we all want to see. That means tough security measures, countering extremist ideology, and progress on the economy, democracy and human rights, which are essential for long-term security.”
Significantly, this short passage contains four references to security.
Casson, like the wretched Fallon, has become a Sisi apologist. His comments were incoherent. Sisi’s government is not in the least secure. It presents exactly the same lethal combination of factors - economic failure, repression, and violent extremism - which brought the collapse of the Mubarak regime.
The collapse of Sisi will have much worse consequences for the West than Mubarak’s. This is partly because Libya has ceased to be an organised state and has left a huge, uncontrolled space on Egypt’s borders for terrorist groups.
But it is also because Western governments, especially Britain’s, have sent a fatal message to the Egyptian people. They will be allowed democracy only if they choose governments of which the West approves.
That message is a terrible gift to Islamic State as it seeks to recruit the millions of disillusioned supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.
- Peter Oborne was British Press Awards Columnist of the Year 2013. He recently resigned as Chief Political Columnist of the Daily Telegraph.
Египет: сторонники Мурси требуют свободу свергнутому президенту
Some areas of Southern Illinois are known historically as Little Egypt. Although part of the Midwest, certain areas of Southern Illinois more closely align culturally with neighboring parts of the Upland South (i.e. Southern Illinois' most populated city is Belleville at 44,478. Other principal cities include Alton, Centralia, Collinsville, Edwardsville, Glen Carbon, Godfrey, Granite City, O'Fallon, Harrisburg, Herrin, West Frankfort, Mt. Vernon, Marion, and Carbondale, where the main campus of Southern Illinois University is located. Residents may also commute to St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Evansville, Indiana; and Paducah, Kentucky. The area has a population of 1.2 million people,[2] who live mostly in rural towns and cities separated by extensive farmland and the Shawnee National Forest. The two higher density areas of population are Metro East (pop. 700,000+), which is the partly industrialized Illinois portion of the St.
The first European settlers were French colonists in the part of their North American territory called Illinois Country. Later settlers migrated from the Upland South of the United States, traveling by the Ohio River. The region was affiliated with the southern agricultural economy, based on enslaved African Americans as workers on major plantations, and rural culture. Some settlers owned slaves before the territory was organized and slavery was prohibited. Many areas developed an economy based on coal mining.
The earliest inhabitants of Illinois are thought to have arrived about 12,000 BC. They were indigenous hunter-gatherers, but they also developed their own system of agriculture. After AD 1000, the production of agricultural surpluses resulted in the development of complex, hierarchical societies. With the rise of the Mississippian culture in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys, tribal leaders organized thousands of workers to build complex urban areas featuring numerous large earthworks - pyramidal, ridgetop and conical mounds used for religious, political and ceremonial purposes. Cahokia, located within the boundaries of present-day Collinsville, Illinois, was the major regional center of this culture. It contains the largest prehistoric earthworks in the Americas, and has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The mound builders' culture seems to have collapsed between AD 1400-1500. The Illinois tribes, for whom the state is named, and other historic tribes migrated to Southern Illinois around AD 1500. Archaeologists say they were not descendants of the earlier inhabitants; they spoke an Algonquian language of Miami-Illini, shared in dialects among neighboring regional tribes. They had likely migrated from eastern areas, where Algonquian-language tribes emerged along the Atlantic Coast and waterways. The Illini left numerous artifacts, including burial sites, burned-out campfires along the bases of bluffs, pottery, flint implements, and weapons. Structures built by them include stone forts or "pounds". Visitors can see a stone fort in Giant City State Park near Makanda.
The French Fort de Chartres' powder magazine, restored, is thought to be the oldest standing building in Illinois. In about 1673, French explorers from Quebec became the first Europeans to reach Illinois. The French named the area Illinois after the Indians who had greeted them. The French explored the Mississippi River, establishing outposts and seeking a route to the Pacific Ocean and the Far East. As increasing Indian unrest and warfare began in Northern Illinois over the lucrative fur trade along the Great Lakes, the French concentrated on building outposts in Southern Illinois.
The earliest European settlers were concentrated along the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash rivers, which provided easy routes for travel and trade. The settlements including Cahokia town, Kaskaskia and Chartres became important market villages and supply depots between Canada and the French ports on the lower Mississippi River. After defeating the French in the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War) and signing the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the English ruled the Great Lakes region. At the time, many French settlers moved from towns on the eastern side of the Mississippi to the western side, which was ruled by Spain after the war.
European-American settlers were slow to arrive in Illinois after the United States victory in the American Revolutionary War. By 1800, fewer than 2,000 European Americans lived in Illinois. Soon more settlers came from the backwoods areas of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. In 1787, the federal government included Illinois in the Northwest Territory, an unorganized area that included present-day Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Slavery was prohibited in this area, but for some time, slaveholders already in the area were allowed to keep their chattel property. As the areas became more populated with European Americans, they could be admitted as states to the Union. Illinois became a part of the Indiana Territory in 1800. Illinois settlers wanted more control over their own affairs and Illinois became a separate territory in 1809. It was admitted as a free state in 1818. The first bank to be chartered in Illinois was located at Old Shawneetown in 1816. The first building used solely to house a bank in Illinois was built in 1840 in Old Shawneetown and was used until the 1920s. The Old Shawneetown State Bank has been restored as an historical site.
Crops of cotton and tobacco were grown in the extreme southern region of Illinois. Cotton was grown mostly for the home weaver, but during the Civil War, cotton was also grown for export, as the regular supply of cotton from the South was not available. Enough tobacco was grown to make it a profitable crop for export.
A feud between families in Williamson County, called the Bloody Vendetta, lasted nearly ten years and took many lives. Senate against incumbent Stephen A. Douglas. A series of debates were held in seven towns in Illinois, including Jonesboro and Alton.
Many of the people living in Southern Illinois were first- or second-generation white Southerners. Many of these families had left the slave South to escape the economic institution of slavery despite retaining its racial ideologies.[5][6] Cairo, Illinois, at the southern tip where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi, grew to considerable commercial importance. The outbreak of the American Civil War exacerbated sectional tensions in the region. volunteers, 34 men from the counties of Williamson and Jackson traveled to western Tennessee to enlist within Company G of the 15th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry. regiments like the 31st Illinois Volunteer Infantry (commanded by famed Southern Illinoisan John A. Logan) or 111th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, both of which were composed exclusively of Southern Illinoisans.
Coal mining became an important industry in Southern Illinois around the start of the 20th century, with cities such as Harrisburg prospering, having a population of 16,000 people during the 1920s.[11] Union miners all over the nation went on strike in 1922; during this period, 24 men were killed during a riot in Herrin, in Williamson County. The Shelton Brothers Gang and Charles Birger gangs operated in Southern Illinois in the 1920s during Prohibition. Shoot-outs between these and other rival gangsters and with law enforcement officers were common. After being convicted of ordering the murder of the mayor of West City, the leader of the Birger gang, Charlie Birger, was hanged in 1928.
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s caused coal miners to lose their jobs as most mines closed. Farmers could not sell their crops and lost their land; families defaulted on home mortgage loans; and young people from the region began leaving for the cities to find work.
Southern Illinois is gaining a cultural identity apart from its neighbors, as previously-dispersed rural populations become more concentrated around the cities of Marion and Belleville. In 1799, Baptist minister John Badgley dubbed the fertile highlands and bottoms near Edwardsville the "Land of Goshen". Early Edwardsville was known as Goshen, a biblical reference to Ancient Egypt. Geographic features such as the Mississippi and its flood plains were like the fertile Nile Valley. The Indian mounds of the area were large at the time and seemed like the pyramids of Egypt. In the 1830s, poor harvests in the north of the state drove people to Southern Illinois to buy grain.[16] Others say it was because the land of the great Mississippi and Ohio River valleys were like that of Egypt's Nile Delta. According to Hubbs,[citation needed] the nickname dates back to 1818, when a huge tract of land was purchased at the confluence of the rivers and its developers named it Cairo . Other settlements in the area were also given names with Egyptian, Greek, or Middle Eastern origins: The Southern Illinois University Salukis sports teams and towns such as Metropolis, Thebes, Dongola, Palestine, Lebanon, New Athens, Sparta, and Karnak show the influence of classical culture.
Although Illinois was a free state before the American Civil War, some residents in the area known as Egypt still owned slaves. Illinois law generally forbade bringing slaves into Illinois, but a special exemption was given to the salt works near Equality. The Underground Railroad also operated in southern Illinois, moving nearly equally northward and southward with bounties available for returned slaves appealing to the residents there. Slaves were going to "Canaan", the land of milk and honey, for which at first glance Egypt would be an easy mistake. Directions to Underground Railroad travelers were coded in Bible verses or songs, and the story of Moses fleeing Egypt was certainly used as an analog to their own plight.
The nicknames for this region also arose from the political tensions of the American Civil War period, as regions of the state allied differently with North and South. Because southern Illinois was settled by Southerners, they maintained a sympathy for many issues of their former home states. They supported the continuation of slavery and voted for Democrats at a time when the northern part of the state supported Republicans. In 1858, debating in northern Illinois, Douglas had threatened Lincoln by asserting that he would "trot him down to Egypt" and there challenge him to repeat his antislavery views before a hostile crowd. In the fall of 1861, Democrats took a majority of seats in the state legislature. They worked to pass provisions of a new constitution, an initiative begun in 1860. They proposed reapportionment so the southern region's less populous counties would have representation equal to those in the north, which was growing more rapidly. Northern Illinois residents worried about the state coming under the political will of the southern minority.
In addition, southern Illinois had become the center of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret group devoted to supporting the Confederacy. Marshal David Phillips arrested several Democrats who allegedly belonged to the Knights, including men in respectable positions: Congressmen, state representatives, and judges. One was Circuit Judge Andrew Duff. They were sent to Washington, D.C., where they were held for 68 days before release, but they were never charged.
After the war, other reasons were proposed for the nickname. Political divisions continued in the state. In the later 19th century, the central and southern agricultural areas joined the Populist Movement. In 1871 Judge Andrew Duff wrote an article in which he ignored the war years and preceding political divisions. He claimed the name of Egypt related to Southern Illinois' role in supplying grain to northern and central Illinois following the "Winter of the Deep Snow" in 1830-31. Following a long winter and late spring, Upper Illinois lost much of its harvest in an early September frost. Southern Illinois's weather gave it good crops, so it could ship grain and corn north.
Belly dancer Farida Mazar Spyropoulos' appearance as "Little Egypt" at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago brought notoriety to the name, but she had no connection to the Illinois region.
One of the earliest uses of the phrase "Little Egypt" is found in the Troy Weekly Call of Troy, Illinois, in 1912. A state news brief was headlined "Two New Little Egypt Pastors", about two new Presbyterian pastors about to be installed at Brookport and Salem, Illinois.[22] The Chicago Tribune appears to have first used the phrase "Little Egypt" in reference to Southern Illinois on April 25, 1920 in an article about fruit grown in the region.[23] The title character in the comic strip Moon Mullins had a girlfriend named Little Egypt.
"Southern Illinois" is not a formal geographic designation and definitions of what constitutes Southern Illinois vary. Many Southern Illinois residents consider the area along and south of Interstate 70 as the dividing line between the Central and Southern parts of the state.[citation needed] The geography of Illinois becomes gradually hillier as one travels farther South. The most populous region of Southern Illinois is the Illinois side of the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. Noted areas are Cahokia Mounds, the American Bottom, and East St. Located on the Wabash River, East-Central Southern Illinois is noted by the town of Salem, the birthplace of William Jennings Bryan, the G. I. Chester, in West-Central Southern Illinois is noted as the "Home of Popeye".[26][27][28] Kaskaskia, the first state capital of Illinois is located near the Mississippi River. This area also contains the ending point of the Kaskaskia River near the Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site. Located within the western reaches of the Cache River, Southwest Illinois is the second most populated region. The region's most notable institution is the main campus of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, winner of the 1971 All-America City Award, finalist in the 2009 contest,[29][30] and the fastest growing city in Southern Illinois outside the Metro East, Marion, Illinois. Both cities are centered in the Carbondale-Marion-Herrin, Illinois Combined Statistical Area, home to 123,272 residents. In the southern reaches of the region Alto Pass and Bald Knob Cross are...
On April 13, the Food Bank of Northern Nevada (FBNN), brought their mobile harvest program to the Tribal Community Learning Center located at 8955 Mission Road in Fallon. The monthly program is open to all Fallon residents and the variety of foods offered changes month-to-month, so there is always something different. According to the USDA, more than 11 million children in the United States live in "food insecure" homes. That phrase may sound insignificant, but it means that those households don't have enough food for every family member to lead a healthy life. And that number pre-dates the corona-virus pandemic. As you might imagine, hunger is a problem that most often affects children from low-income families. Department of Health and Human Services. Hunger definitely looks different these days.
In 2021, the federal poverty level is $26,500 for a family of four. But families making twice that much are still considered low-income by most experts, and often struggle to make ends meet. How many Americans live in poverty?
Mike Escobar, a Programs Specialist for FBNN stated that pre-pandemic the Food Bank was seeing 180-200 families a day. During the pandemic, the numbers skyrocketed to 1,000 families a day, including a pick-up day held at the Grand Sierra Resort. The FBNN has 147 partners they work with; in Fallon, they are New Frontier, Out of Egypt, Epworth United Methodist Church, and the Fallon Food Hub. Fallon is no exception when it comes to food insecurity. Rochanne Downs, Director of the Community Learning Center, knows how important it is to help her community. She delivers food to the home-bound elderly in her community to assist those that cannot get to the sites to pick up for themselves. Escobar said that they are hoping to continue the program for rural Nevada going forward.
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