I stand corrected. Of course it was SPECTRE.

SMERSH was one of the dead fish….

I imagine most of us are well aware of the Egyptian Army’s prior activities. The ‘message’ I referred to was intended I suspect, to serve as both a reminder and confirmation that they retain their ruthlessness. Fanatics need to have the ‘choke chain’ regularly applied as, “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” W. Churchill or as the American humorist and writer Finley Peter Dunne stated, “A fanatic is a man who does, what he knows God would do . . . if only God had all the facts of the matter” 🙂

In the ME there are two possibilities; a jihadist nation state led by fanatics or a brutal strong man regime. A strong man who uses ruthlessness to achieve power and then uses the minimum amount of repression needed to keep the ‘pressure cooker’ from exploding is the best that can be achieved.

Generally, strong men avoid fanaticism, which leads to short reigns. Occasionally, an overly ambitious strong man, like Saddam, will lead to them becoming more than a regional threat, in which case the proper response is to facilitate the rise of another strong man who is more amenable to international boundaries…

These conditions will continue to apply as long as Islam is the majority religious/ideology of the region. That is so because of Islam’s irreformable foundational tenets.

Some other observations:
1) No one predicted the fall of Morsi so soon. Everyone knew the Moslem Brotherhood would be elected to run Egypt and that they would make a mess of it, but no one predicted the “outs” would act like they were in a free country and demonstrate for Morsi’s ouster. That was unexpectedly good news.

2) Jihadis are entering the Sinai thru tunnels from Gaza. In other words Hamas is now waging war against Egypt as well as Israel. This supports the contention that the Palestinians are dumber than moss.

BTW the answer to the question of what single should be asked of the two people guarding the cave is:
If I asked the other person whether this cave is safe what would he answer?

The consistent liar would answer if the cave was the fatal one: He, the other guy, would say it safe.
If it were the safe one: He would say it is the fatal cave.

The consistently honest person would answer if the cave were the fatal one:
He, the other guy, would say that the cave was safe.
The consistently honest person would answer if the cave were the safe one:
He, the other guy, would say that the cave was the fatal one.

Therefore no matter who answers the question, if either person says that the other person would say that a particular cave is safe then you know it is the fatal cave. Likewise if either says that the other person would say that a particular cave is the fatal one you know that it is the safe one.

Seemingly it was SPECTRE’s (not SMERSH) Ernest Stavro Blofeld, who kept the Siamese fighting fish as an illustration of his strategy.

That’s the strategy I’ve advocated for dealing with Syria. Rather harsh on actual non-combatants, sadly, but can be an effective way of keeping bad guys occupied with each other.

I never knew that game had a proper name. I always knew it as “adventure”.

It involved a diabolically simple prop: One fish tank containing three Siamese fighting fish.

My fellow Neo-geezers will immediately recall this scene and its important lesson. [To the others, try Google]

Who knew we could learn such sound foreign policy from an organization like SMERSH?

And what are we to make of the MB-Tehran-Hamas-Hez axis?

Geoffrey Britain…

The Egyptian Army has repressed the MB for DECADES — up to and including hangings.

They don’t lack for street cred. They’ve got nothing to prove on that front.

As for the Islamists pushing too hard — they have only two gears — FORWARD and PUSHING BACK TWICE AS HARD.