Unwilling to Take Palestinian Refugees

(AP) — As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge under Israel’s relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan don’t take them in.

The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have replied with a staunch refusal. Jordan already has a large Palestinian population.  

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi made his toughest remarks yet on Wednesday, saying the current war was not just aimed at fighting Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, “but also an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to ... migrate to Egypt.” He warned this could wreck peace in the region.    READ MORE...

Ancient Egyptian Foreign Mercenaries

A team of archaeologists from the Czech institute of Egyptology have unearthed a tomb in the Abusir necropolis, near to modern-day Cairo, Egypt.

The tomb belongs to an Egyptian dignitary named Wahibre-mery-Neith, who lived during the 26th or 27th Dynasty (5th century BC).

Inscriptions in the burial shaft describe him as a “Commander of Foreign Mercenaries”, suggesting that he supervised the mercenaries from the Aegean islands and Asia Minor.

The site was first excavated in 2021, where archaeologists found the largest ancient embalming cache in Egypt, containing 370 pottery storage jars that held materials used in the mummification of Wahibre-mery-Neith.

In the latest season of excavations, the team focused on the burial shaft and excavated 14 metres of material to a depth 6 metres below ground level. They found that the shaft was orientated east-west and measures approximately 6.5 by 3.3 metres.

At the bottom of the shaft the researchers found a double sarcophagus situated directly on a filling of sand, but discovered that the tomb had already been robbed in late antiquity during the 4th to 5th century AD (indicated by two early Coptic vessels found in the main shaft).

The outer sarcophagus is made of two massive blocks of white limestone that contains an inner sarcophagus made of basalt and is inscribed with the Book of the Dead, chapter 72, describing the resurrection of the deceased and his departure to the afterlife.  READ MORE...

Ancient Egyptian Statue

AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN statue pulled from beneath the bustling streets of Cairo "changed" researchers' understanding of pharaohs in what was a breakthrough find.

Archaeologists, historians and other researchers have poured over relics discovered across Egypt. The country has one of the longest spanning and well recorded histories in the world. 

William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the British archaeologist and Egyptologist, made valuable contributions to the techniques and methods of field excavation in Egypt in the late 19th century.

He invented a method that made possible the reconstruction of history from the remains of ancient cultures.

One of his biggest and most revered finds came in 1884 during the excavation of the Temple of Tanis, where he found fragments of a colossal statue of Ramses II.

Ramses was a great pharaoh, who is often regarded as the most celebrated and most powerful leader of the New Kingdom — a period that was itself the most powerful era of Ancient Egypt.

In March 2017, a team of researchers were carrying out excavations at a neighbourhood in northeast Cairo, the territory once inhabited by Ramses.  READ MORE...

Oldest Known Forest

The fossilized web of a 385-million-year-old root network has scientists reimagining what the world's first forests might once have looked like.

The picture they have painted couldn't be more different to what now sits in its place. Near the small town of Cairo in upstate New York, under an old highway department quarry, scientists have reconstructed the remains of what was a mighty and mature old-growth forest – home to at least three of the world's earliest tree-like plants.

Some of these initial tree 'wannabes' (known as cladoxylopsids) would have looked like large stalks of celery, shooting 10 meters (32 feet) into the sky. Others resembled pine trees, but with hairy, fern-like fronds for leaves (Archaeopteris). The third long-lost plant would have taken after the palm tree, with a bulbous base and canopy of fern-like branches (Eospermatopteris).

Seven parallel cross-sections of the Cairo site have researchers thinking these primordial trees were quite old and large. As such, they were not packed densely together, but were relatively scattered across a floodplain that ebbed and flowed with the seasons.

Dry periods were a regular part of the cycle, and yet the Cairo forest, which traced the Catskill river, seemed to host primitive trees we once thought could only survive in swamps or river deltas. These tree-like plants belong to the genus Eospermatopteris, and they look sort of like tall ferns standing on bulbous stumps.

Because these towering plants have shallow roots that don't branch, they probably didn't cope well in drier conditions - so their presence in the ancient floodplains of Cairo is confusing.  READ MORE

The Shadows of our Memories

President John F. Kennedy in the month of November 1963 was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas and the ENTIRE WORLD mourned the loss of a GOOD MAN as he was perceived by the general public according to what the NEWS MEDIA wanted the general public to know about JFK.

I was living in Cairo, Egypt at the time and a classmate at the time called me on the telephone and told me what he had heard.  I did not believe him but told my parents who made a few phone calls and confirmed what I had been told.

Interestingly, Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH earlier that same year in August when my parents, brother, and I were traveling to Cairo, Egypt via several sightseeing stops in Europe after a 12 day ocean voyage across the Atlantic on Holland America's USS Constitution.

1963 was a transition year for me, my family, as well as ALL AMERICANS because that is the year when, like the song APPLE PIE (or When the Music Died) AMERICAN POLITICS DIED as well.

And, for a half century (53 YEARS)  American Politics stopped being FOR THE PEOPLE and became FOR THE POLITICIANS and their hopeful perpetual re-elections.  As Americans became FAT, DUMB, and HAPPY, the rest of the world like:  the Middle East, Russia, China, Japan, Asia and India began to silently grow in population, technology, strength,  power, and most importantly STEM education.

What did Americans do?

We smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine, inhaled meth by freebasing and drank more than our share of alcohol and food...

2016 is not the year and with more than unexpected alarm, a new President is elected but not by the popular vote but by the ELECTORAL COLLEGE which was put into the US Constitution by the Founding Fathers because they PERCEIVED that the American People could be manipulated...  and, not only did this happen but our new President is a political outsider and a disdainful businessman who is a billionaire and exemplifies the heart and soul of our Capitalistic Free Market Enterprise Economic system...

What a crushing blow to the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS who theoretically are the party of the working class and the Middle Class who have no opportunity to achieve such wealth in their lifetimes, even though our advertising brochures for America refer to us as the LAND OF OPPORTUNITY.

And so the attacks begin and as our ECONOMY STRENGTHENS and grows beyond expectations, so too does the attacks on our President.  THEN... the unimaginable happens and China releases a Pandemic and the ENTIRE WORLD is shutdown economically...  and, even though President Trump listened to his health advisors, he is not only blamed for the Virus but is blamed for the destroyed US economy.

Whether the US changes in 2020 or 2024 is not the question...  the question is not a question but a statement of fact...   and, that fact is...  at some point-in-time in the near future, America will change politically and that change will be dramatic and that change will put us into a position economically from which will MAY NOT BE ABLE TO RECOVER...

2030 will be the year to watch...

2050 will be the year that America is no longer even close to being a world power...

It does not take a brain surgeon to see this.  All one has to do is perform an INTERNET SEARCH on Forecasts for 2030 and 2050 and read the results.

Here is an example for 2050

1.  The world economy will double

2.  The world population will double perhaps triple

3.   China and India will have the greatest economies, the USA will be third or fourth behind Indonesia

4.  Shortages of food and water will begin to emerge as problems

5.  The global economy will shift towards China/India and away from NYC/Los Angeles

6.  Technology will be the fastest growing industry

7.  The USA will no longer lead the world in millionaires or billionaires

8.  America's Colleges and Universities will not longer lead the world

9.  America's military will no longer be the most powerful

10.  China will be the most powerful country in the world

If you are 30, 40, or even 50 years old now, you will live long enough to see this happen....

Cairo American College

From 1962 through 1966 I attended Cairo American College, in Maadi, Cairo, Egypt because my
father worked for the American Embassy.  The school housed grades 1-12 and those who attended were the children of Diplomats stationed at their respective Embassies in Cairo, Egypt.  My graduating class totaled 28 with about 12-15 different nationalities.  I remember that the Valedictorian of our Senior Class was a Hungarian Communist.

During those years 1962-1966, it was possible to climb up the pyramids which I understand is no longer possible.  My fellow classmates and I climbed to the top of one of the pyramids, carrying a goat-skin water bag full of wine that we drank once we got to the top.  It was also possible and very easy to buy little blocks of hash from street vendors but I suppose that is no longer possible either.

CAC had no cafeteria so all students had to bring their lunch and sit at picnic table under a covering to protect us from the sun.  While there were trees and a little vegetation, most of the area inside the walls of the school was compacted sand.  The buildings were made of substance that reminds me of sandstone or a plaster/clay like material.  The buildings had tall ceilings with fans and openings covered with wooden shutters with no glass or screens.  I guess the idea was that heat rises and it would remain cool where one was seated, but that was never the case.

Our sports teams basically consisted of basketball and field and track and volleyball.